Re: [boost] [test] Boost.test failures in develop

Subject: Re: [boost] [test] Boost.test failures in develop
From: Adam Wulkiewicz (adam.wulkiewicz_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-10-06 05:27:45

Raffi Enficiaud wrote:
> Le 05/10/15 23:50, Adam Wulkiewicz a écrit :
>
>> [snip]
>>
>> This is so untrue. I don't know how the majority of the industry works
>> but at least in a part I know about the reality looks different than you
>> think. Believe it or not but there are companies which are bound to
>> c++03 simply because they're shipping some major version of a product on
>> a particular OS comming with a specific compiler.
>
> It also happened to me, but what works best in that case what is to 
> stick to a specific version and backport the fixes, which is much 
> easier (because selective) than sourcing a new version of boost with 
> hundreds of changes. If they need a new version, they first test if it 
> works for them and increment their version if everything is alright.
>
> Companies that heavily depend on a setup do that: they have to control 
> the build environment totally, which means also the specific versions 
> of their dependencies. There is a little bit of a control in 
> production environments, and the desire of upgrading is less important 
> than the overall functional stability of the products.
>
>> And in the same time
>> they want the latest Boost features and bugfixes so they're compiling
>> against develop branch of a library.
>
> I strongly disagree on the fact that develop branch has some contract 
> with end users. Develop branch has mainly a testing and packaging 
> value wrt. other libraries of boost, so the merges to master are 
> cleaner and the potential coupling of libraries is properly handled. 
> If some end user wants the latest bug fixes from develop branch, it's 
> his choice to have a code that potentially breaks his/her code.
>
> I would say it is also the same for master. I believe there is a big 
> release effort at every release of boost to get things done properly, 
> and this effort is not performed in between. Also the bug fixes are 
> hardly announced nor published, and until there is no announcement, 
> there is no commitment from boost side. So it is up to the end users 
> if they want to upgrade from master: they might source a code that 
> might break a contract.
>

Maybe I shouldn't use develop branch in my example, sorry for confusion. 
My point is that there are users out there who are forced to compile 
against c++03 and the latest Boost version. Or as in the example going 
even beyond this.

<snip>

Regards,
Adam