Re: Proposal: "Newly Endorsed Libraries" section in release notes

On March 9, 2026 10:52:26 PM Vinnie Falco <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> tl;dr for Peter:
>
> Low visibility produces few early adopters.
> Few early adopters produce thin reviews.
> Thin reviews produce costly libraries.
> Costly libraries produce low visibility.
>
> Four lines in the release notes break the cycle at the cheapest point.

Unrelated content makes release notes less useful to the intended reader, 
to the point of being annoying.

>
> wall of text for Andrey:
>
> I do hear the scope objection, but I think the premise is narrower than the
> release notes actually are. The release notes have never been limited to
> code changes in the tarball. Every release notes page has a "New Libraries"
> section that reports an ecosystem event - a library passed review during
> this cycle.

No, it reports what's been added to the release. If a library has passed 
the review but has not been included in the release (e.g. due to a review 
ending too late), it wouldn't be mentioned in the notes.

> The notes also list removed libraries, updated tools, and known
> issues. The scope already includes "things that happened to Boost since the
> last release."

Not what happened but what changed in the new release. Endorsement is not 
such a change.

> An endorsed library is one step earlier in the same pipeline. Endorsement
> is a formal community action with a public record on this list.

To be frank, I never fully understood the point of endorsement. If I 
endorse a library, does it mean I'm obligated to write a review? It's a 
difficult promise to make since endorsements are made before the review 
time frame is set. And since I bothered to endorse, does it mean I promise 
my review will be positive? I don't remember examples of the opposite.

I don't think the answers to the above questions should be "yes". I guess, 
you can consider endorsements as an indication of community interest, but 
not more than that. There are many ways to express interest, why not report 
on that?

If anything, I would rather the repotring increased the interest to the 
proposed library, regardless of endorsements. A news item on the web site 
about a proposed library with a short description and an invitation to 
discuss and review it would be a good thing.

> Reporting
> it is no different in kind from reporting that a new library was accepted
> or a tool was updated.

Yes, but where that reporting is done matters. Release notes is not the 
right place, as endorsements are not relevant to the purpose of that document.

> Andrey, you diagnosed this problem sixteen years ago. In March 2010 you
> wrote: "Boost is rather closed to its community. I don't know how it
> happens, but on independent news I regularly read of such projects as KDE,
> GNOME, Qt, Linux Kernel and others, but nearly nothing about Boost. The
> Boost web site changes rarely - essentially, the news column only lists
> recent Boost releases. For an outsider, nothing really happens around
> Boost, and that's sad. If Boost was more open and communicated to the public,
> I think, there would be much more activity in Boost, and during reviews in
> particular."
>
> That is exactly the problem this proposal addresses. The release notes are
> the one document where outsiders actually look.

That's not *why* they look in that document. They come there for one 
purpose and the document must serve that purpose well.

You've made a new beautiful website, use it to better expose proposed 
libraries. You have socials to notify people.




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