[review][beast] Beast Review Results
In an effort to get you all to just read this announcement sequentially, I will start with the result: Beast is ACCEPTED into Boost without conditions The entire community is served when the Boost review process works well and I would like to personally thank each of you who took your valuable time and worked to make Boost better. We had 21 formal reviews submitted from a demographic that included both seasoned participants and first-time reviewers. It is gratifying to have such participation for what some might see as a niche library. * Thank you Vinnie for your effort to assemble a high-quality package for review and for your responsiveness on the mail-lists. GitHub, and Slack. * Thank you to the individuals that submitted their first Boost review. * Thank you to the veteran contributors and authors for continuing to devote energy to the community. I found the discussion surrounding the library beneficial and I know that Vinnie walked away with actionable items to improve Beast. -------------------- The Stats: -------------------- While the review process is not exactly tallying up votes and casting a verdict, we can gain some insight of the general, gross-scale opinion of the library. Official reviews were received from: Reviewer Accept | Reject ------------------------------------------ * Zach Laine : X * Nik Bougalis : X * Artyom Beilis : X * Peter Dimov : X * Klemens Morgenstern : X * Glen Fernades : X * Marcel Ebmer : X * Scott Determan : X * Stanislav Karchebnyy : X * Michael Larson : X * Vadim Zeitlin : X * Jared Wyles : X * Niall Douglas : X * Barrett Adair : X * Gyorgy Szekely : X * Daniela Engert : X * Jens Weller : X * Phil Endecott : X * Bjorn Reese : X * Rüdiger Berlich : X * Christopher Kohlhoff : X Most of the reviewers agreed on the inclusion of Beast into Boost and at the same time that Beast isn't a great name for the library. (Just say Boost.Beast 10-times-fast). Vinnie has a FAQ item discussing the name and his continuing use is deliberate. He has heard the petitions to change and weighed them. -------------------- Concerns: -------------------- A variety of concerns and comments were made during the review. An impressive number of items were addressed in code or documentation during the review period itself. Some of the stated concern for rejection included: * Too many templates * Run-time polymorphism / OO would be better. * Library scope is too small and provides no real value to users - This is clearly one of those value judgements and for some users the not-in-scope nature of Beast made the feature set not compelling enough to use or have as a Boost library. Other users spent time converting existing projects to use Beast. This included projects previously running POCO, libcurl, and homegrown solutions. Beast has existing commercial and open-source users. The library clearly meets the needs of some users. * Premature optimization * Security concerns * Poor support for HTTP chunking - Vinnie proposed and then later made changes addressing the chunking concerns. Unfortunately, the reviewer with the complaint did not respond to multiple requests for feedback. * Licensing - Four files have dual licenses (BSL and another). Boost's legal counsel is reviewing the situation and we hope to have guidance by the end of this week. I have not placed a condition on the acceptance of Beast based on the legal feedback because Vinnie knows licensing issues must be remedied before the repository is merged into Boost. -------------------- The Upsides: -------------------- There were lots of great things said about the Beast package. Some of these include: * Great documentation * High quality implementation. * Thorough test suites * Already being used by commercial entities and others * Lots of successful real-life conversions of existing clients/servers * Extremely responsive developer (do you sleep Vinnie?) -------------------- An Author as much as a Library: -------------------- Accepting a library into Boost is also accepting an author. Boost authors have enormous latitude in the control and modifications of their libraries. Vinnie has shown dedication to addressing issues, listening to constructive input, making changes when appropriate, and protecting his vision of what the Beast is. I believe Vinnie will serve the community well as a contributor. -------------------- Final Thoughts: -------------------- Reviews are hard. It is hard to have your work torn apart and remain considerate. It is hard to repeat answers to previously asked questions. It is hard to explain specific use-cases and why it is important a library supports them. It is difficult to critique a large body of work. It is hard to stick with conversations to make overall improvements. I was impressed with the participants in the review. We are all opinionated and passionate -- likely a prerequisite to being part of the Boost community. Thank you all for making Boost better. I'm looking forward to seeing additional libraries and application built with Beast. -- Michael Caisse Ciere Consulting ciere.com
On Thu, Jul 20, 2017 at 12:56 AM, Michael Caisse via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:
In an effort to get you all to just read this announcement sequentially, I will start with the result:
Beast is ACCEPTED into Boost without conditions
Great news! * Extremely responsive developer (do you sleep Vinnie?)
I believe that the evidence is fairly conclusive that Vinnie is a machine and does not require sleep or sustenance. --------------------
An Author as much as a Library: --------------------
Accepting a library into Boost is also accepting an author. Boost authors have enormous latitude in the control and modifications of their libraries. Vinnie has shown dedication to addressing issues, listening to constructive input, making changes when appropriate, and protecting his vision of what the Beast is. I believe Vinnie will serve the community well as a contributor.
I believe so as well. I'm glad to see more highly qualified individuals join the ranks of Boost library authors. I'm grateful, as this helps ensure the long term health of the libraries and, by extension, the broader C++ ecosystem. Thanks to everyone who participated in the review.
Am 20.07.2017 um 09:56 schrieb Michael Caisse via Boost:
Official reviews were received from:
Reviewer Accept | Reject ------------------------------------------ * Zach Laine : X * Nik Bougalis : X * Artyom Beilis : X * Peter Dimov : X * Klemens Morgenstern : X * Glen Fernades : X * Marcel Ebmer : X * Scott Determan : X * Stanislav Karchebnyy : X * Michael Larson : X * Vadim Zeitlin : X * Jared Wyles : X * Niall Douglas : X * Barrett Adair : X * Gyorgy Szekely : X * Daniela Engert : X * Jens Weller : X * Phil Endecott : X * Bjorn Reese : X * Rüdiger Berlich : X * Christopher Kohlhoff : X
There must be a reason why my formal review was sorted out. Obviously my formal review was not good enough. Wasting time sucks, so I would like to make a better review next time. Can you give me some hints what of / where my review must be better to get accepted? Thanks, Mike...
On Thu, Jul 20, 2017 at 8:00 AM, Mike Gresens via Boost
There must be a reason why my formal review was sorted out. Obviously my formal review was not good enough.
To my knowledge there is no such thing as a "rejected" review - ALL reviews are considered and weighed appropriately. I think we might have just forgotten to include you in the list, my apologies! I double checked my own list and you aren't on their although obviously I read your review (I read every message posted to the list, its nice to see you in the math/polynomial thread :) ). Your review was quite helpful, it gave me insight into how Beast is being used and how it might be improved so I would say do not be disheartened because of a clerical error - your input was quite valuable and I also think that the regulars on the list are quite happy to see new people participating! Thank you!
On 7/20/17 08:00, Mike Gresens via Boost wrote:
Am 20.07.2017 um 09:56 schrieb Michael Caisse via Boost:
Official reviews were received from:
There must be a reason why my formal review was sorted out. Obviously my formal review was not good enough.
Wasting time sucks, so I would like to make a better review next time. Can you give me some hints what of / where my review must be better to get accepted?
Mike - I apologize. I had not tagged your review in my email program. I did receive it and distinctly recall reading it because: * you were one of the users that had ported a curl based client to use Beast * you had been very active with the GitHub issues which I was also following closely Again, I do apologize for leaving you off the list. Thank you for your involvement with the Boost community. michael -- Michael Caisse Ciere Consulting ciere.com
On 7/20/17 00:56, Michael Caisse via Boost wrote:
In an effort to get you all to just read this announcement sequentially, I will start with the result:
Beast is ACCEPTED into Boost without conditions
<snip some words> Seems like the table was difficult to read with non-monospaced fonts. I should have kept with the accept/reject words. I apologize for not thinking about that. Here is a more legible version.
-------------------- The Stats: --------------------
While the review process is not exactly tallying up votes and casting a verdict, we can gain some insight of the general, gross-scale opinion of the library.
Official reviews were received from:
-- Library Accepted By -- Zach Laine Nik Bougalis Peter Dimov Klemens Morgenstern Glen Fernades Marcel Ebmer Scott Determan Stanislav Karchebnyy Michael Larson Vadim Zeitlin Jared Wyles Niall Douglas Barrett Adair Gyorgy Szekely Daniela Engert Jens Weller Rüdiger Berlich Christopher Kohlhoff -- Library Rejected By -- Artyom Beilis Phil Endecott Bjorn Reese -- Michael Caisse Ciere Consulting ciere.com
2017-07-20 9:56 GMT+02:00 Michael Caisse via Boost
In an effort to get you all to just read this announcement sequentially, I will start with the result:
Beast is ACCEPTED into Boost without conditions
Congratz. Finally beer time for all invested effort in the lib. Vinnie proposed and then later made changes addressing the chunking
concerns. Unfortunately, the reviewer with the complaint did not respond to multiple requests for feedback.
People review frozen targets, not moving targets. Unfortunate, indeed, but I wanted to add this small note (it's not like it's reviewer's fault for not having added feedback on the Beast v2 which wasn't the thing being reviewed). -- Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira https://vinipsmaker.github.io/
On Fri, Jul 21, 2017 at 9:59 AM, Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira via
Boost
People review frozen targets, not moving targets.
Unfortunate, indeed, but I wanted to add this small note (it's not like it's reviewer's fault for not having added feedback on the Beast v2 which wasn't the thing being reviewed).
That is definitely true, but I was asking not in the context of the formal review but in the context of simply getting feedback from a stakeholder. Even if Beast was not accepted, Bjorn's feedback is still valuable because existing users benefit from library improvements. I would still like interested parties to review the design of chunking. Although Beast has already been ACCEPTED to Boost without conditions, the earliest version in which Beast can be merged is 1.66.0 in December, so there is plenty of time for me to make adjustments - I consider all feedback and as mentioned before I am responsive to issues. If you want to make a difference in Beast, or if you want to make sure Beast doesn't have an interface design flaw that would hinder its usage in your Boost.Http library, then your participation is vital. Regards
2017-07-21 19:03 GMT+02:00 Vinnie Falco via Boost
I would still like interested parties to review the design of chunking. Although Beast has already been ACCEPTED to Boost without conditions, the earliest version in which Beast can be merged is 1.66.0 in December, so there is plenty of time for me to make adjustments - I consider all feedback and as mentioned before I am responsive to issues. If you want to make a difference in Beast, or if you want to make sure Beast doesn't have an interface design flaw that would hinder its usage in your Boost.Http library, then your participation is vital.
You said so in a private email and I'll take an easier time to review. Thanks for the offer. :) I'm travelling a lot these last weeks and still solving a few “emergencies” at work, so I don't have time to do a proper review. But knowing that the design is kind of stabilized is a great incentive to me. -- Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira https://vinipsmaker.github.io/
participants (6)
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Glen Fernandes -
Michael Caisse -
Mike Gresens -
Nik Bougalis -
Vinnie Falco -
Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira