Re: [boost] [filesystem] Version 3 of Boost.Filesystem added to trunk

Subject: Re: [boost] [filesystem] Version 3 of Boost.Filesystem added to trunk
From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-06-06 13:16:19

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 4:20 AM, Andrey Semashev
<andrey.semashev_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> On 06/02/2010 07:07 PM, Beman Dawes wrote:
>>
>> Because version 3 will break some user code, both v2 and v3 will be
>> shipped for several releases. For 1.44, the default is  v2 and the
>> user has to explicitly switch to v3.
>>
>> I'd really appreciate it if some Boosters could give v3 a try on your
>> own code that uses Boost.Filesystem.
>
> I think that the approach of manual switching between v2 and v3 is not very
> good. The packagers will not be able to ship both versions of the library in
> Linux distributions, which effectively means that v3 will not get adopted.
>
> Also, if I want my code to be compatible with both versions of the library,
> I cannot see a way to detect which version is currently installed. This is
> the case with my Boost.Log - it's not compatible with v3, mostly because
> path is not a template anymore. I would like people to be able to use
> Boost.Log regardless of which Boost.Filesystem their application uses.

You and Scott McMurray have convinced me that this is a real problem.
>
> I would really prefer to have both versions of the library available at any
> time. Either as two separate libraries (like signals and signals2) or as two
> parts of one library (like spirit v2 and classic). In the latter case it
> could be compiled into one binary, with v2 and v3 being in different
> namespaces and "namespace filesystem" being an alias to one of them.

That's the approach I'm prototyping. Looks promising. Stay tuned...

Thanks,

--Beman