On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 12:21 PM Zach Laine via Boost
...the Boost review process and the WG21 review process have fundamentally different aims. Boost wants the best C++ libraries that appeal to its reviewers. WG21 wants to make sure something is appropriate for the standard. Those are similar, and even overlapping, but fundamentally different goals.
This might be how it is today, but it is not how it should be. The ongoing cost of an accepted Boost library is considerably less than the ongoing cost of accepting a new standard library component. When a library is accepted into the standard, it makes subsequent additions more expensive, as the new addition must be considered in the context of an expanded set of existing facilities. There was a brief discussion earlier this year about which libraries should be accepted into Boost. Peter's answer was "a library that is useful" (among other things of course). Being useful should be a necessary but insufficient quality of standard library proposals. Not only must they be useful, but they should appeal to a broad audience, and the paper must include the rationale for why the library should be incorporated into standard instead of remaining as a downloadable dependency from elsewhere. To my knowledge, no paper has ever provided a quantitative analysis for why it needs to be in the standard instead of existing as a third party library. I think they should. Thanks