Re: [boost] List of C++ 11 only Boost libraries and their status?

Subject: Re: [boost] List of C++ 11 only Boost libraries and their status?
From: Nat Goodspeed (nat_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-12-13 09:27:47

On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 5:12 PM, Robert Ramey <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> People using older
> compilers are mostly maintaining old code.  I doubt they really
> need new libraries.

I hope that presumption doesn't drive any policy decisions regarding
the future of Boost.

Our product uses just short of 50 third-party library packages (one of
which contains several Boost libraries). The ABI problem means that in
practice, to upgrade to a newer compiler, we must rebuild all those
packages with the new compiler.

I need hardly mention that the idiosyncratic build scripts for each
package need iterative tweaking to produce clean builds with the new
build system. That's quite aside from the C++ source changes required
by compiler evolution.

Given that, I am very happy that this year my organization committed
the resources to update to newer compilers on Windows and Mac. It's
taken us three months. Although I personally consider our code base
fairly large, I realize that a large organization would consider it
laughably trivial. It's all too easy to understand that with a larger
code base, or different management, such an effort might never have
gotten a green light: we'd have remained stuck on pre-C++11 compilers.

Yet our product is under active development. We continue to add new
features and refactor existing code. We recently added a couple more
third-party libraries. I am keeping a keen eye on the Boost library
suite.

I do not believe that Boost should require C++03 support for new
libraries. As has been pointed out, the barrier for entry to Boost is
already quite high.

I'm just contradicting the assumption that those who must work with
old compilers aren't doing any new development, or have no interest in
new libraries.