On 8/29/18 1:50 PM, Nevin Liber via Boost wrote:
On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 3:38 PM Robert Ramey via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:
Hmmm - I don't really know what vcpkg actually does. Basically if we distribute only source and no binary then we're not responsible for all the stupid stuff that people do with it.
We aren't responsible anyway.
By shipping binaries we're encouraging people to use them. This seems like we're helping them - but I maintain that we are not actually helping anyone with this policy. Not shipping binaries means we will be
making things harder for some users, especially newcomers to Boost.
maybe, maybe not. Now,
the outcome of this discussion may be that we will no longer ship binaries because we cannot do it correctly for most use cases, but let's not pretend not doing so is a benefit to the end user.
I think not shipping stuff that won't work benefits the user. I also thing that not shipping the binaries would save a lot of work on our part. If some third party wants to take this they are free to do so.
By not distributing binaries, we avoid burdening people who do know what they're doing with silent ABI inconsistencies which can cause almost impossible to find bugs.
I thought that the people "who do know what they're doing" are building the binaries themselves anyway, so I fail to see how we are burdening them.
Right - typo should be: avoid burdening people who DON'T know what they're doing Robert Ramey