Re: [boost] Deprecation and Boost

From: Gennadiy Rozental (gennadiy.rozental_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-05-05 12:49:42

"Robert Ramey" <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote in message 
news:e3fo20$8sl$1_at_sea.gmane.org...
> Personally, I think the whole concept of "deprecation" is dead end.
>
> Any library author has the authority to decide which platforms he
> will support.  Boost only requires that code be conformant with
> the C++ standard.  Its not something that requires or even permits
> a communal decision.

I do not agree it's proper way looking at that. IMO "deprecation" has 
nothing to do with library itself. What it has to do with is what you test a 
library on. IOW whether or not any particular library works on any 
particular platform is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether library is 
*tested* of that platform. From this prospective deprecation means that 
particular platform is excluded from testing. That does not mean that 
library will stop working on that platform. But it means that "all bets are 
off".

In addition it's possible to deprecate any particular library on any 
particular platform we do perform testing. The current mechanism for that is 
to mark platform as unsupported in test results view ( I am not sure whether 
the actual test are going to be performed, anyone?).

[...]

> Example, the serialization library compiles and passes almost all
> test with bib 5.51.  Who is to tell me that it should or should not
> do that.

Nobody. But if boost stops testing on this platform that platform is 
deprecated. Now if you are interested enough to keep this platform from 
deprecation you should either argue against dropping testing or volunteer to 
perform testing yourself..

> Now the new boost.test library will no longer support this platform.
> Hence I have two choices stop testing with bib 5.51 or avoid
> usage of boost test.  This is a decision I'll have to make on my own.

As I explained earlier Boost.Test will continue privide support for Boost 
regression on all active platforms (IOI on all platforms that are not 
deprecated)

Gennadiy