Re: [boost] Which compilers are not supported for 1.48 ?

Subject: Re: [boost] Which compilers are not supported for 1.48 ?
From: Sebastian Karlsson (sairony_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-07-20 07:19:22

2011/7/19 James Mansion <james_at_[hidden]>:
> On Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:16:36 +0100, Sebastian Karlsson <sairony_at_[hidden]>
> wrote:
>>
>> I think it's counter productive to tailor code around vendor specific
>> work arounds, instead the vendors should fix their issues. It's better
>
> This is an appalling attitude - not towards vendors, but towards users.
> The only way to get bug fixes in Boost is to rev forward to new releases,
> and you appear to have the attitude that if that requires compiler upgrades
> its just tough.  Life, in reality, is not like that on any non-trivial
> production system: Boost is just one component: the compiler builds all
> the components.  Its a non-trivial upgrade, and likely not an agile one.
>
> James

To support all versions of all vendors is a maintenance nightmare,
negatively affects readability and overall is just a whole lot of
trouble. This is IMO already an issue when reading the boost source,
where there's often multiple code branches for compilers with
different quirks. Making sure that the most widely used compilers are
supported is reasonable, but making sure that for example VS6 works
for new features is more trouble than it's worth. Besides, projects
still on VS6 are mostly just maintenance and likely won't upgrade
boost anyway. 99% of all other 3rd party libs does not support as wide
range of compilers as boost, so boost won't really be the first
problem. Same goes for compilers with very low user count, it's better
to contact the vendor in that case and pressure for a fix. It's a huge
disservice to the user in the long term to have libraries tailor
themselves to compiler specific workarounds, that's why we have a
standard.

Kind regards,
Sebastian Karlsson