Re: [boost] What about <sstream> for GCC users?

From: Douglas Gregor (gregod_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-06-20 07:45:45

On Wednesday 20 June 2001 02:21, you wrote:
> What about this situation:
>
> 1.  I think GCC 3.0 adds the <sstream> header,

Yes.

> 2.  Which the previous versions (2.x) didn't have,
> 3.  Except for the very last sub-version of 2.x,

2.95.3 has it.

> 4.  But there's no way to distinguish that last 2.x sub-version,
> 5.  So you can't check if you have the 2.x <sstream> except by choking.
>
> If we can't find a way to distinguish between the last sub-version of GCC
> 2.x and the ones before it, maybe we could just "screw" the users of that
> last sub-version.  We'll only #define BOOST_NO_SSTREAM for versions of GCC
> less than 3, without trying that last sub-version of 2.x.  Users of that
> oddball version can live without Boost usage of <sstream> or edit
> <boost/config.hpp> themselves.  Is that oddball version only a month or so
> old, maybe it isn't too late to just go up to GCC 3?

The 2.95.x series is not finished. 2.95.4 is in the pipeline to include more 
bug fixes. The upgrade to GCC 3.0 is a major one (new standard library, new 
C++ ABI, new exception handling mechanism, etc.) and I don't expect to see 
GCC 3.0 as a system compiler anywhere for quite a while (remember: .0 
releases for GCC are generally 'features' releases, and may not necessarily 
be stable enough to safely compile a Linux kernel with).

2.95.x will be around for a bit longer. The 'system compiler' nature of GCC 
on Linux is a bit unfortunate, because it raises the bar quite a bit for 
upgrading. Perhaps by the time GCC 3.1 is out we'll be able to consider 
2.95.x 'deprecated' for Boost.

        Doug