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

Subject: Re: [boost] [Booster] Or boost is useless for library developers
From: Artyom (artyomtnk_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-05-15 10:32:18

> Well, due to the inner shape of boost, such change are
> inevitable.
> What can be done is having such ABI-breaking change
> documented in a
> big, red, blinking part of the documentation.

Then all documentation would be red and blinking.

Two reasons:

- Class layout of many libraries may change with some small feature
  in configuration that may depend if you compile with gcc-4.1 or gcc-4.3
- Good example shared_ptr:

  - You may add debug define and class layout is changed 
  - Sometimes it uses pthread sometimes atomic operations and it depends
    on so many things. And every 2nd boost upgrade added implementation
    for new platform.

    So **every library** that uses shared_ptr (like every 2nd boost
    library) would break ABI.

The problem that Boost as whole never looks on ABI.

> 
> Did you repackaged libstd++5 when the 6 went out and broke
> some binary compatibility ?
> 

6 Years ago? To be honest these days I don't remember if I had any project
in C++ at all ;-)

Artyom