Re: [boost] [Booster] Or boost is useless for library developers

Subject: Re: [boost] [Booster] Or boost is useless for library developers
From: Roland Bock (rbock_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-05-15 09:27:50

Artyom wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I want to bring up an important issue that boost developers are not aware of: anybody who develops a library and wants to keep any kind of backward compatibility can-not use Boost.
>   
I don't think that this is correct:

Sure, boost ABI changes from release to release but unless you want to 
provide a "one-for-all" binary release of your library, what is the 
issue? Even libstdc++ ABI changes every now and then.

You can still provide binaries for certain distributions. For instance, 
Ubuntu-8.04 comes with boost-1.34 and libstdc++.so.6. That won't change.

And those users which don't find a suitable binary version can still 
compile your library on their own, using their preferred version of 
boost. And they will succeed, most likely, because the API changes are 
pretty rare.

In addition, to be honest, personally I would try to avoid a library 
that uses such pseudo-boost in its API instead of the real thing, 
because I want to use boost, not some look-alike. I don't want to use 
the umpteenth version of a smart pointer...

Regards,

Roland