Subject: Re: [boost] Boost Incubator Status Report
From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-11-07 17:35:02
On 11/7/2014 11:23 AM, Robert Ramey wrote:
> Vladimir Prus-3 wrote
>> it's just we see that formal reviews are not as well-attended as before,
>> and one way to improve
>> might be to make participation easier.
>
> I've been concerned about the low attendance in the formal review process
> for years. (Is Boost Broken? BoostCon 2010?). The motivation behind the
> design of the incubator is to "make participation easier" by decoupling the
> preparation of the review from a specific 1-2 week time frame. It was also
> specifically designed to not alter the actual Boot Review process. So far,
> it has only garnered one "pre-review" so one could say it's a failure. But
> I'm not done yet. I'm very stubborn - I made 27 versions of the
> serialization library (with one formal review which rejected it. I'm not
> done yet here either. There wiil be incremental changes in the Boost
> Library Incubator implementation to encourage more reviews.
Other than lengthening the formal review process to encourage more
people to participate I do not see any means to get people more
interested in reviewing Boost libraries. As far as the incubator is
concerned I feel it is a good idea but nobody is using it to comment on
libraries. As far as Boost reviews it appears that most programmers are
afraid to even make comments about a potential library in which they may
be interested. Maybe the specter of C++ experts scares them away. Maybe
they feel that they might look foolish if they make a comment which is
based on just a partial understanding of the library involved. I do not
think the problem is with the programmers defending their library up for
review since nearly all of them are openly willing to explain any area
of their library which a reviewer may not understand or approve.
Finally there is a decided problem with the lack of people willing to be
review managers for a library. I think it would be a good idea to
establish a pool of people, with their e-mail addresses, willing to be
review managers and then when a library is on the review queue one of
the review managers would send out e-mail to all people in the pool
asking each one if he would be willing to be the review manager for a
particular library. If no one at a given time in the pool will agree,
then after some pre-established time period the process repeats itself.
Of course if almost no one is willing to be part of the pool, then we
won't have any formal reviews.