Re: [boost] Which Boost libraries support which compilers/versions

From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-07-29 17:09:13

Robert Ramey wrote:
> David Abrahams wrote:
>> on Sun Jul 29 2007, Edward Diener <eldiener-AT-tropicsoft.com> wrote:
> 
>> We all know it's a problem, but nobody has yet designed and
>> implemented a solution.  Perhaps you'd be willing to take up the
>> charge?
> 
> Well, I have the same problem.
> 
> Here is what I'm doing to address it.
> snip...
> 
> I believe that every user of boost in a production environmentment should 
> undergoe this process.  (Actually, a similar process should be undertaken 
> with all software. Commercial software usually includes a series of tests 
> and demos that the user can can run to verify that everything works as it is 
> expected to.

You believe that every end user who wants to use a particular Boost 
library should run a test script just to determine whether or not that 
library is supported by Boost for the compiler/version which that person 
uses ?

That would be fine if Boost supplied such a test script for each library 
for any particular version of Boost, or even intends to support such a 
test script in the future. Is there presently such a script ? If so, and 
it were as easy to run as specifying a command on a command line within 
whatever is the shell for the particular operating system the user runs, 
or even if it were a Python script which requires some version of the 
free Python product on the end users machine, I would be glad to use it, 
and I imagine many other end users would also.

Please understand I am talking about something which can test any 
particular library and not Boost as a whole, since trying to determine 
Boost as a whole, for a particular compiler/version for a particular 
version of Boost, is done by the config system.

My point is that the config system may well say that a particular 
compiler/version is supported as a whole while a particular library may 
not support that compiler/version. That is often the case with older, 
more non-conforming libraries and while programmer's may well want to 
use the latest version of a particular compiler or a better compiler, 
the contingencies of work in corporate America, or corporate anyplace 
else, as well as the end users own choice, may keep that from happening.