John Phillips wrote:
Jose wrote:
The community objective is to get a generic library were multiple authors can eventually contribute their algorithms, like Boost BGL or the competing CGAL. This situation is one of the cases were cooperating is justified and worthwhile for everybody.
I don't recall a single reviewer stating the ability of multiple authors to contribute algorithms as an objective for them. I may be forgetting something, so please point me to it in the archives if so. If not, then I do not consider this a community objective. Historically, I see no evidence for it as a standard Boost concern, either. Again, please correct me if I'm missing something.
I agree that this openness to contributions is not something that often happens in Boost libraries, but for the record I would personally like the geometry efforts to have that sort of focus so that I can contribute algorithms. I believe that I expressed this long ago during one of the numerous "bike shed" point concept discussions; I may not have mentioned it explicitly in my Polygon and GGL reviews but I am flagging it now.
In the Polygon review, 4 people said no and gave their reasons for saying so. 6 people said yes, and also gave their reasons. The review manager, who is well versed in the technical issues of the library weighed the strength of the different arguments and found the yes arguments not only more numerous, but also more persuasive than the no arguments. He proceeded to address the no arguments in the review result and explain why he did not find them persuasive.
Here is an extract from my "No" review to Boost.Polygon: " As I will explain in detail below, my complaints are mainly things like excessive warnings and odd misfeatures in the interface. These are all things that could be fixed, and they perhaps only indicate that the library has arrived a little prematurely. Based only on these issues my verdict would be that that the library could be accepted after some revisions. But we must also look at the bigger picture, i.e. the existence of other competing libraries "in the wings". ... " In view of all this, I suggest that this library should be rejected for now. This will tell Barend that he still has an opportunity to present his library for review, and that it will be considered on a level playing field. If Barend's library is reviewed and found to be more complete, more performant and at least as usable as this library, then it should be accepted. On the other hand, if Barend's library is found to be deficient in some way (or is not submitted for review), then Luke will have an opportunity to resubmit an updated version of this library, which I anticipate should be accepted. " In the review result announcement, Fernando listed many of my minor complaints about the library but did not address this suggestion, or the existence of GGL "in the wings", at all. Regards, Phil.