RE: [boost] Re: Survey of Libraries and Visual C++

From: Moore, Paul (paul.moore_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-01-24 04:27:54

From: dwolfram_at_[hidden] [mailto:dwolfram_at_[hidden]]
> Yes, Visual C++.NET does not implement partial template 
> specialization or full Koenig lookup. 

Frankly, that is disastrous news. When can we expect a version of Visual C++
which does support ISO Standard C++? Judging by previous timescales, and the
fact that I would not expect a change of this magnitude to be issued in a
service pack (correct me on this if I am wrong!), we are therefore looking
at a number of years before Visual C++ can support libraries like Boost.

> However, several conformance-related and other issues have been 
> resolved that may be of interest to library developers:
> 
> Q240862 BUG: C2555 On Virtual Functions with Covariant Return Types
> Q240871 BUG: Explicitly Specified Template Functions Not Overloaded 
> Correctly
> Q241569 BUG: C2258 and C2252 on in Place Initialization of Static 
> Const Members
> Q241706 BUG: C2123 on Function Try Block Syntax
> Q241940 BUG: C2954 on using class template as template parameter
> Q242192 BUG: uncaught_exception() Always Returns False
> Q243444 BUG: CSTDLIB Does Not Define the Namespace STD
> Q167733 PRB: Operator New Doesn't Throw bad_alloc Exception on Failure
> For loop variable scope
> void return type
> standard names added to std
> aggressive inlining
> debugger and STL types
> conformance of header files and standard library
> memory allocation diagnostics
> template template parameters
> member function template arg specification support.

These are useful, but seem less important.

> The results of the survey so far have been discussed by the team.
> We are actively addressing issues mentioned, and continue to be most 
> interested in feedback from library developers and users.

That is extremely good news, and to be honest, it's about time. If we had
had this sort of interest from the development teams from an earlier stage,
perhaps the message that conformance to the language standard was actually
important would not have been so completely missed...

Paul.

(Apologies if this sounds harsh. I have just spent a number of days trying
to work around the lack of Koenig lookup, and it is a regular occurrence for
me to find interesting and important libraries which don't support MSVC,
because MSVC doesn't have partial template specialisation... If my company
didn't require me to use MSVC, I would long ago have abandoned it.)