RE: [boost] Submission policy

From: Paul Moore (gustav_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-05-07 16:46:54

From: Beman Dawes [mailto:beman_at_[hidden]]
> * Is portable and not restricted to a particular compiler or
> operating system.

I think we could do with expanding on this. In particular, I would like to
see some guidance on how far we expect implementers to go in supporting
common, but non-standard, compilers (see how I avoided saying MSVC there?
:-)

In my view, for Boost to be credible, it needs to be of practical use. Like
it or not, this means having working implementations on the "standard"
compilers. For Unix, I assume this means GCC. For Microsoft, GCC is a start
(with mingw and cygwin available), but I'd like to see Borland and MSVC at
least partially supported. I don't know for Mac or other platforms.

How about a statement to the effect of

* Is portable and not restricted to a particular compiler or operating
system. Implementations should ideally run on currently available compilers
(gcc, MSVC and Borland C++ are widely used). Providing limited functionality
where compiler features are missing is acceptable.

[[I just spent 15 minutes staring at this posting, trying to word a rant
along the lines of "I hate MSVC, but I am forced to use it, I want to use
good C++ libraries and I'm sick of finding the good libraries all have
disclaimers along the lines of "we don't support MSVC because it's too
broken"". Thankfully, I decided not to include it. :-) :-(]]

Paul.