[asio-users] asio dead?

[Markus Wanner]

Chris, list,

I've just received another complaint about the status of asio. Given the
age of information on think-async.com and that the git documentation
still refers to it, the project is perceived dead.

At least I now see 1.10.0 tagged on github (until recently, it only
occurred in the boost::asio revision history for boost 1.54). Thanks.

Regards

Markus Wanner

[Vinnie Falco]

Plus, what's up with that archaic source code control system? CVS? SVN? Really?

Post by Markus Wanner
Chris, list,
I've just received another complaint about the status of asio. Given the
age of information on think-async.com and that the git documentation
still refers to it, the project is perceived dead.
At least I now see 1.10.0 tagged on github (until recently, it only
occurred in the boost::asio revision history for boost 1.54). Thanks.
Regards
Markus Wanner
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[Gruenke,Matt]

What's the nature of the complaint?

Is the concern that ASIO has bugs which aren't getting fixed? If it's something like that, I'd contact the central Boost maintainers for getting patches in, if the library maintainer(s) are being unresponsive.

Also, it might help if you could explain what you mean by "dead". I regard ASIO to be mature, as it seems fairly complete and stable. I consider a library to be dead when significant bugs are no longer being fixed or it fails to build or function correctly on current platforms.


Matt


-----Original Message-----
From: Markus Wanner [mailto:***@bluegap.ch]
Sent: September 17, 2013 11:46
To: asio-***@lists.sourceforge.net
Cc: ***@kohlhoff.com
Subject: [asio-users] asio dead?

Chris, list,

I've just received another complaint about the status of asio. Given the age of information on think-async.com and that the git documentation still refers to it, the project is perceived dead.

At least I now see 1.10.0 tagged on github (until recently, it only occurred in the boost::asio revision history for boost 1.54). Thanks.

Regards

Markus Wanner


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[Markus Wanner]

Post by Gruenke,Matt
What's the nature of the complaint?

Lack of communication and promotion (of and about the standalone variant
of asio).

Post by Gruenke,Matt
Also, it might help if you could explain what you mean by "dead".

To me, a project that has dozens of bugs but several people working on
it to fix them clearly is more alive than one with no known bugs and
nobody working on it. Liveness of a project is orthogonal to bug counts
or maturity, IMO.

Up until recently, I wasn't aware of any update since 1.4.8. That's
three years of nothing happening. To my knowledge, think-async.com,
sourceforge.net, and Wikipedia still represent that state. All these are
top ranking hits for "asio C++ library" on Google and Bing.

To repeat my main question: Are there proper release tarballs since
1.4.8? (And no, github doesn't offer release tarballs, but git
snapshots, see release.pl for differences.)

Regards

Markus Wanner

[Alexander Holler]

Post by Markus Wanner

Post by Gruenke,Matt
What's the nature of the complaint?

Lack of communication and promotion (of and about the standalone variant
of asio).

Post by Gruenke,Matt
Also, it might help if you could explain what you mean by "dead".

To me, a project that has dozens of bugs but several people working on
it to fix them clearly is more alive than one with no known bugs and
nobody working on it. Liveness of a project is orthogonal to bug counts
or maturity, IMO.

So the more bugs, the more quality?

I don't share this illusion and like mature libraries which don't change
a lot. It might be astonishing, but there still exists some software
without many bugs.

And I don't see why it should be dead. In fact, I've seen some C++11
related branches. Some things just need their time, especially if you
want those things to be stable.

Regards,

Alexander Holler

[Markus Wanner]

Post by Alexander Holler

Post by Markus Wanner

Post by Gruenke,Matt
What's the nature of the complaint?

Lack of communication and promotion (of and about the standalone variant
of asio).

Post by Gruenke,Matt
Also, it might help if you could explain what you mean by "dead".

To me, a project that has dozens of bugs but several people working on
it to fix them clearly is more alive than one with no known bugs and
nobody working on it. Liveness of a project is orthogonal to bug counts
or maturity, IMO.

So the more bugs, the more quality?

Mind you, "orthogonal" is not the same as "inversely proportional".

Rather than arguing about what makes a library stable or a project
alive, could you please focus on my main question and complaints?

The absence of answers only reinforced my impression of (standalone)
asio being dead, so far.

Regards

Markus Wanner

[Alexander Holler]

Post by Markus Wanner

Post by Alexander Holler

Post by Markus Wanner

Post by Gruenke,Matt
What's the nature of the complaint?

Lack of communication and promotion (of and about the standalone variant
of asio).

Post by Gruenke,Matt
Also, it might help if you could explain what you mean by "dead".

To me, a project that has dozens of bugs but several people working on
it to fix them clearly is more alive than one with no known bugs and
nobody working on it. Liveness of a project is orthogonal to bug counts
or maturity, IMO.

So the more bugs, the more quality?

Mind you, "orthogonal" is not the same as "inversely proportional".
Rather than arguing about what makes a library stable or a project
alive, could you please focus on my main question and complaints?

I haven't seen any real complaint from you other than

"Lack of communication and promotion (of and about the standalone
variant of asio)."

So I've already focused on the first. Maybe you should focus on the
second and promote asio.

Regards,

Alexander Holler

[m***@bluegap.ch]

Post by Alexander Holler
I haven't seen any real complaint from you other than
"Lack of communication and promotion (of and about the standalone
variant of asio)."

That's my main complaint, yes. Why neglect it? In another mail in this
thread I gave more details:

"Up until recently, I wasn't aware of any update since 1.4.8. That's
three years of nothing happening. To my knowledge, think-async.com,
sourceforge.net, and Wikipedia still represent that state. All these
are
top ranking hits for "asio C++ library" on Google and Bing.

To repeat my main question: Are there proper release tarballs since
1.4.8? (And no, github doesn't offer release tarballs, but git
snapshots, see release.pl for differences.)"

AFAIK all of that still holds.

Post by Alexander Holler
So I've already focused on the first. Maybe you should focus on the
second and promote asio.

That's a bit hard to do without access to think-async.com and without
support form the people behind the project, don't you think?

Also note that I am packaging asio (standalone) for Debian. In a way,
that can be considered promotional.

(We're still shipping 1.4.8 there, because I wasn't aware of anything
newer until I started this thread. ATM the main problem remaining is
that I'm unable to generate the documentation from an asio (standalone)
snapshot from git. But that's a purely technical issue. I'm more
concerned about the project status issues. As it stands, I'd have to
give up the package. Which might not be the end of the world, either, as
the boost package provides boost::asio.)

Regards

Markus Wanner

[Alexander Holler]

Post by m***@bluegap.ch
Also note that I am packaging asio (standalone) for Debian. In a way,
that can be considered promotional.
(We're still shipping 1.4.8 there, because I wasn't aware of anything
newer until I started this thread. ATM the main problem remaining is
that I'm unable to generate the documentation from an asio (standalone)
snapshot from git. But that's a purely technical issue. I'm more
concerned about the project status issues. As it stands, I'd have to
give up the package. Which might not be the end of the world, either, as
the boost package provides boost::asio.)

Maybe you should have added those explanations to your complaints
before. At least I now understand your real problem.

Regards,

Alexander Holler

[m***@bluegap.ch]

Post by Alexander Holler
Maybe you should have added those explanations to your complaints
before.

I had. That excerpt was copied from the very mail that you initially
responded to.

Post by Alexander Holler
At least I now understand your real problem.

Glad to hear that. Thanks for your understanding.

What do you recommend? Is there any hope the situation will change or
do I fight a lost battle trying to maintain a standalone asio package?

Regards

Markus Wanner

[Alexander Holler]

Post by m***@bluegap.ch

Post by Alexander Holler
Maybe you should have added those explanations to your complaints
before.

I had. That excerpt was copied from the very mail that you initially
responded to.

Nothing in your initially mail stated you are a packager/maintainer from
Debian.

Post by m***@bluegap.ch

Post by Alexander Holler
At least I now understand your real problem.

Glad to hear that. Thanks for your understanding.
What do you recommend? Is there any hope the situation will change or do
I fight a lost battle trying to maintain a standalone asio package?

I don't know and can only speak for myself:

I wouldn't have thought that someone maintains a package for the
standalone version of asio. And from a distribution point of view, I
would have thought that it might be in the interest of the distribution
that the boost version will be used.

I allways have seen the standalone version as a very nice giveaway for
developers with special needs which do know what they do and do know
what (e.g. which version/commit) they use. So it was already some sort
of unsupported or "internal version" for me.

But as said, that's just how I understood the purpose of the standalone
version and I can't in no way speak for any of the developers of asio.
Nor do I know anything about what's going on.

I'm just a happy user which sees that problems, if there are any, are
still discussed and/or fixed.

Regards,

Alexander Holler