Re: [boost] Should we still be testing GCC 2.95.3?

From: Maciej Sobczak (prog_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-01-10 04:10:14

Vladimir Prus wrote:

> Not that I care about 2.95 either, but I think the reasoning in this thread is 
> a bit faulty. Developers just say "it's too old and non-conforming". But who 
> knows what's used in practice, especially outside of bleeding-edge Linux 
> distros?

LynxOS here (distributed real-time control systems), with g++ 2.95 
toolchain. No way to upgrade for the foreseeable future due to the 
complex net of dependencies between components, some of which are not 
our own. Since g++ changed ABI in the meantime, upgrading the compiler 
means that the whole world needs to be recompiled and relinked. This is 
what makes the upgrade near to impossible.

I try to promote Boost for development here and there's a lot of 
"resistance". If Boost drops support for 2.95, it might be an additional 
argument against using Boost at all.

(On the other hand, if we're using stone-age compilers, we might as well 
stick to some existing Boost version - if it's accepted for use - and 
just not follow its evolution. That's still fine, because the most 
fundamental Boost libraries are already stable and useable.)

This is not to tell you that you should keep supporting stone-age 
compilers forever, just to show that the world is not composed of only 
latest Linux distros that we can get with the Sunday's newspaper. There 
are companies and institutions that are bound to older compilers and 
cannot just press the "upgrade" button.

Having said that and being still completely serious, I'd drop support 
for 2.95 and for everything else (VC++6.0, others?) that's already not 
supported even by the company or organization that made it.

-- 
Maciej Sobczak : http://www.msobczak.com/
Programming    : http://www.msobczak.com/prog/