On 2017-01-03 07:35, Robert Ramey wrote:
On 1/2/17 12:08 PM, Vladimir Batov wrote:
... The problem with the incubator IMO is that it does not provide any guarantee whatsoever that the library will be accepted/around/maintained in the future.
No one - not even boost - can make such a guarantee.
Oh, come on. Of course, nothing in life is guaranteed. I can't guarantee I wake up tomorrow morning. But surely we all understand what I was trying to say. Is there really anything to debate/discuss here?
The deployment requirements might well be different for other people but my situation is that we simply cannot include an external library/dependency without such a guarantee.
I do not think a real world product can depend on anything outside it's own organization. This is the motivation behind open source code.
I simply described the "real-world" project/product I am involved in. I've been doing it for quite some time and as far as I can remember all those "real-world" projects were using external libs and Boost has always been one of them. Forgive my saying but to say "I do not think a real world product can depend on anything outside it's own organization" seems very much out of touch with this very real-world... unless I misunderstood/misinterpreted it.
The burden/impact of retiring/replacing a no-longer-supported library is likely to be unacceptably high.
Here is the way a Boost - or any other library should be used.
0) determine that a library is suitable to one's sitation 1) clone the library(ies) to one's local system. 2) If the libraries require building - build them 3) run tests on all libaries used. 4) build and link product/application 5) run application tests
On "upgrade" of libraries or tools
1) update some libraries which need it 2) run tests on all libraries 3) re-build ap and re-run app tests
So in no way should you be depending on something outside of your control. You should depend only on your local copy. This is true for any library accepted into boost or not!!!
There seems to be misunderstanding as I was not referring to a local copy. It's not an issue. It appears obvious to me that an external lib (local copy or not) is outside of my control... unless I am prepared to take responsibility of maintaining the lib... which is not an option. With Boost that risk is minimal (practically non-existent); with incubator that risk is quite high. Others might disagree.