Re: [boost] Any Chances for Boost Stable?

Subject: Re: [boost] Any Chances for Boost Stable?
From: Phil Endecott (spam_from_boost_dev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-01-21 11:50:07

Artyom wrote:
> Is there any chance for Stable Boost version?

Boost is a collection of libraries with different characteristics.  The 
best that we can hope is that each individual library declares that it 
is, for example:

- Stable, because it's a completed implementation of e.g. a tr1 or 
c++0x feature that's not going to change.

- Stable, in the sense that new features will be added and old stuff at 
worst deprecated (e.g. Spirit and its "classic" branch).

- Unstable, because it's a new library that's still evolving.

- Bah humbug this library maintainer doesn't want to tell you if it's 
stable or not so you can assume the worst :-)

It would help for the docs to spell this out explicitly, but I think 
most of us can probably guess the answers for the libraries that we use.

I have some experience of distributing source code that depends on 
Boost, and there is an issue here.  It's not reasonable to depend on a 
single version of Boost since distributions only package -dev packages 
for one version, which could be too new or too old.  As a result I tend 
to avoid dependencies on libraries that I suspect are unstable in this 
sort of code.

There is much less of a problem if you either rely on distributions to 
establish compatibility or if you distribute binaries.

Regards,  Phil.