From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-08-26 20:37:59
Christian Larsen wrote:
> I was just wondering why such process which seems to work perfectly well
> for other projects is a nightmare in the case of Boost. But I guess the
> sum of all the libraries make things so much more complicated that it is
> nearly impossible to manage. Kudos to you all for actually getting
> releases out the door, it's much appreciated.
A short time ago in IRC I posited that the difference between Boost and
the majority of OSS projects is the developer organization. Most OSS
projects fall into two categories:
a) Relatively small in team size.
b) relatively large in team size.
For (a) the management of what constitutes a release and hence how much
work is in a release is up to one or two people to decide and implement.
For (b) things get rather complicated and various projects manage the
complexity differently. But like (a) there is usually a small number of
people who get things done. So the spectrum of size happens to work
because they simplify the complexity. So what's the difference with
Boost? Well, it's the developers. For each release all the developers
try and coordinate to get all their libraries in working order at the
same time... Have you heard the joke about herding cats? Well it's worse.
But that was then, in the < 1.34 days... Now the release system solves
the problem by introducing that responsible individual in the form of a
gateway into what goes into the release. So what's so special about
this? Nothing really... And you can see the same management solution in,
for example, the Linux kernel. But there is one difference between Boost
and other large OSS projects... Those other large projects then to have
a *full-time* *paid* person(s) to do this management work.
And as the saying goes... The rest are just details ;-)
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