On 06/08/2024 14:51, René Ferdinand Rivera Morell via Boost wrote:
The svn->git transition worked like this:
* A couple of library developers implemented the process for doing the transition and provided a working model. * There were discussions on the list about that and the idea of the transition. * The community agreed to go to the committee and ask for a "thumbs up" to fully complete the transition.
I wouldn't remember it that way. My memory is that Dave asked for the help of a select few in writing the tooling to do the conversion because the Boost community had proved singularly useless in taking a decision, and he was going to impose a decision as BDFL after a great deal of wailing and complaint about there being any change at all. He then rammed it through fairly unceremoniously giving people very little choice about it.
The cmake incident went like this:
* There were lots of recurring discussions about cmake (the first one starting during the svn->git transition). * A couple of library developers started experimenting and implementing support of cmake for end users. * A couple of different developers, unaware (AFAIK) of that preliminary work, asked the Foundation to decide that Boost should move to cmake. AFAIK they didn't define what moving to cmake meant. But not sure as all that happened in the isolation of C++Now.
Can you spot the differences?
The successful case was to reaffirm what the community had already decided. The "unsuccessful" case was to usurp the community process.
Another way of looking at that is today Boost has almost complete cmake build support. In terms of **eventual outcome**, it has been quite the success, and the Dimov got that done incrementally and non-coercively. I'd therefore say the second case example is the more productive and less dysfunctional personally. Niall