Re: [boost] Removing support for old compilers

Subject: Re: [boost] Removing support for old compilers
From: Stephen Kelly (steveire_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-10-13 14:51:09

On 10/13/2013 02:30 PM, Joaquin M Lopez Munoz wrote:
> Stephen Kelly <steveire <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>>
>> That was done in this commit actually:
>>
>>  https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/changeset/85272
>>
>> That commit message doesn't specify the compiler versions affected
>> either though, indeed.
> You want this info to be spoken out oud and easily accessible;
> now it is hidden deep into one of your many recent commits (worse
> yet, 85275 was commited on your behalf by Daniel, so looking for skelly
> is not guaranteed to catch every relevant commit.) 

My changes amount to removal of definitions of some macros in
boost/config, followed by removal of newly-dead code.

The log in boost/config is most relevant to what you seem to be looking
for. There are very few changes there recently.

I recommend using git-svn and `gitk boost/config`. I must confess I'm
surprised at how few people on this list use git-svn. No one I know who
has reached a certain familiarity with git would always use it over raw
svn. Have you ever used git? I wonder will the git migration be
beneficial/painful for this community.

Or are you speaking for users, and not for yourself (I'm reading below)?
I suppose you must be speaking for yourself as you talk about inadequate
commit messages... My best advice to you is to use git-svn and gitk.

> Considering
> that authors and, particularly, users do not customarily scan
> Boost commits at svn.boost.org, chances are the majority of
> affected people won't notice until Boost 1.56.

Ideas for improving that are welcome. Do you have any ideas? What about
keeping

 http://www.boost.org/users/news/old_compilers.html

up to date with the changes/bumps?

>
>>>  and one has to investigate in order to find out
>>> what other compilers are effecively dropped as a consequence of TPS
>>> being required (the log mentions MPW and SunPro 5.3, but I guess
>>> Digital Mars and GCC 2.x are also affected,
>> Only the config/compiler files for MPW and SunPro are affected by this
>> commit.
> Which are not listed in changeset 85272.

You don't understand. Maybe I was not clear enough. Let me try again:

 Only the config/compiler files for MPW and SunPro are affected by
revision 86241.

In that context, your comment about revision 85272 makes no sense.

Do you understand now?

>  Are there other compilers affected?

This also makes no sense with the (hopefully?) clarity above. I answered
this in the grandparent mail.

>> The DigitalMars one didn't define
>> BOOST_NO_TEMPLATE_PARTIAL_SPECIALIZATION, nor did it do so before
>> revision 85272, so if it needed the macro, it was already broken.
> But at least one of your commits is related to Digital Mars:
>
> https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/changeset/86043

What does one of my commits being related to Digital Mars have to do
with revision 85272 or BOOST_NO_TEMPLATE_PARTIAL_SPECIALIZATION?

Please don't change the point of what we're discussing mid-thread. It's
not fair to move the goalposts like that.

Revision 86043 is not different to the commits which affected MSVC or
GCC. I simplified a preprocessor condition for a compiler which has been
marked as obsolete.

>>>  I have also the suspicion
>>> that along the way you have removed macros and workarounds not
>>> directly related to TPS or MSVC 6.0/7.0. 
>> Can you be more specific?
> Changeset 86043 was the one smelly commit I spotted.

It is not smelly. __DMC__ >= 0x810 is always true as of revision 85272.

>
>>> * Consider adding some [xxx] subject tag in your communications to
>>> the mailing list so that users and maintainers can easily track
>>> them (for instance, [compiler support])
>> I'll never understand why people want '[compiler support]' prefixing a
>> message titled 'Removing support for old compilers' (both keywords are
>> there) or 'Bumping borland, SunPro, mwerks and MPW compiler
>> requirements' (MPW is more-specific than 'compiler support', so if
>> someone cares about MPW, that's what they'll notice).
> Prefixing, which is regularly used in Boost mailing lists, allows people
> interested in a particular initiative to easily filter
> and track related messages. Now, if I want to consult the prior
> discussions on your efforts I have to look for your name and filter out
> not related stuff.

Filtering for my name is enough. You can consider the [compiler
support]/[modularization] implied on all messages from me.

Thanks,

Steve.