After six months of, slowly, working towards this I can now say that the C++ compiled version of the B2 engine is ready for use. As such I plan, if there are no objections from Steven Watanabe and Vladimir Prus, to merge the result into the develop branch shortly after the 1.70 release. The history note accompanying this "new" engine version goes like this:

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Version 4.0.0

After even more years of development the landscape of build systems has changed considerably, and so has the landscape of compilers. This version marks the start of B2 transitioning to a C++ implementation. Initially this means that the engine will be compiled as C++ source but that source is still the base C implementation. Over time it will transform to a C++ code base in both the engine and build system. Some changes in this start:

* Requires C++ 11 to build engine.

* Simplified build scripts to make it easier to maintain.

* Building with C++ optimizations gives an immediate performance improvement.

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There will obviously be bumps on the road when that merge goes in. As the C++ 11 requirement might require some changes for testers and users. But hopefully they will be minor.

-- Rene Rivera
-- Grafik - Don't Assume Anything
-- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net