Re: [boost] Should we still be testing GCC 2.95.3?

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-01-09 08:18:00

On Mon, 9 Jan 2006 12:24:51 +0300, Vladimir Prus wrote
> On Monday 09 January 2006 12:00, Gennadiy Rozental wrote:
>
> > I support this. Pre 3.0.0 release is a cause for huge number of
> > workarounds. Specifically related to classic IO and weak templates support.
> > Lets get rid of these.
> 
> Not that I care about 2.95 either, but I think the reasoning in this 
> thread is a bit faulty. Developers just say "it's too old and non-
> conforming". But who knows what's used in practice, especially 
> outside of bleeding-edge Linux distros?

I agree it would be nice to know what's used in practice, but that's hard to
gauge directly.  GCC 2.95.3 was released in March 2001, GCC 3.0 in June 2001.
 I can't remember the last major Linux distro I played with using 2.95.x as
the compiler, but I think it was some version of Mandrake in 2002.

Stepping back to a more global perspective, software needs to move on and it's
my view that boost in particular needs to shed the harness of old compilers. 
The talented people on this list waste too much time with the burden of issues
for these old compilers. gcc 2.95.x and msvc 6 still have support by old boost
releases for folks that can't move forward. Maybe we need a page on the
website to describe that 1.34 is the end of support for the old guard
compilers.  Yes, it means they don't have access to the latest and greatest
stuff in boost, but that's also true of C++ since they are using old bad
compilers. 
 
> Maybe, the procedure for retiring compilers should including posting 
> a message with prominent subject to boost-users and waiting for a 
> couple of weeks for feedback?

No disagreement with that.  

Jeff