On 22 March 2010 12:43, Schrom, Brian T <brian.schrom@pnl.gov> wrote:
In a nutshell, I believe that the Boost Vision statement needs to be revisited and determine what Boost is. To me, it seems to have wandered a bit away from it's originally established goals. If I could have my cake and eat it too, I would like to see Boost divided into three subprojects: 1) Research and development of C++ Standards and libraries, 2) Repository for complementary (and integrated) but non standards bound libraries, and 3) sandbox projects. Within 1 and 2, there should be unstable, testing, and stable libraries. I believe this would set user's expectations appropriately.
I really like that split. I always liked the idea of a "core", but trying to define what that would be was quite hard. With "standards-track" libraries, we can require, in essence, that it comes along with a committee paper describing it in addition to the normal Boost requirements. I'd also be glad to have the category 2, since it echoes my feelings about some of the recent libraries that I don't expect to ever use, though were plausibly useful to some or many. I'd suggest shipping even the category 3 libraries in releases, though only in a clearly separate area. "Determine interest" would get it into category 3, and people could start using -- and hopefully even reviewing -- the libraries while they're there. A fairly typical Boost review could then examine the the usability to move it into category 2, allowing the possibly of multiple libraries in the same domain. A final review of design and implementation could then move certain libraries into category 1.