Re: [boost] Boost and exceptions

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost and exceptions
From: Emil Dotchevski (emildotchevski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-06-21 23:39:46

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 5:32 PM, Dave Abrahams <dave_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> Attempting to break a deadlock here...
>
> It seems clear to me from his posts that Robert wants to talk about the
> process and has forgotten any specifics about actual problems.  It seems
> clear to me from your posts that you are most concerned with actual
> problems.  Since he doesn't have the information, why not take his
> suggestion and search the lists for problems involving throw_exception
> and serialization?

I don't need to search, I remember very well. :)

In its initial release (1.36), Boost Exception did not support
BOOST_NO_RTTI configurations, which seemed reasonable because most
compilers require RTTI for exception handling. The workaround was to
#define BOOST_EXCEPTION_DISABLE under BOOST_NO_RTTI. A permanent fix was
committed to trunk two weeks later, and released with 1.37.

Faced with the initial problem, Robert's knee-jerk reaction was to not call
boost::throw_exception at all. He changed Boost Serialization, making it
incompatible with all previous releases under BOOST_NO_EXCEPTIONS.

Someone pointed out Robert's mistake, which he corrected, but not before it
got out with the following Boost release (1.37), in which Boost
Serialization had his flawed (and unnecessary) workaround, requiring
BOOST_NO_EXCEPTIONS users of Boost Serialization to make changes in their
code. They had to revert those changes for 1.38.

That was the end of it (or so I thought.)

Emil Dotchevski
Reverge Studios, Inc.
http://www.revergestudios.com/reblog/index.php?n=ReCode