Re: [boost] [winapi] Default target Windows version

Subject: Re: [boost] [winapi] Default target Windows version
From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-10-16 06:13:13

On Wednesday 16 October 2013 12:05:51 Olaf van der Spek wrote:
> On 16-10-2013 0:20, Andrey Semashev wrote:
> > On Tuesday 15 October 2013 23:05:45 Olaf van der Spek wrote:
> >> What's the concrete advantage of defaulting to Vista? Performance?
> > 
> > Yes, mostly. Vista has builtin support for condition variables and
> > read/write mutexes, for example. Compiler-based TLS can be used safely
> > with dlls. GetTickCount64 can also be useful in some contexts and is
> > difficult to emulate. All these features will find their use at least in
> > Boost.Sync and Boost.Log (the latter currently uses its own protocol for
> > enabling use of these APIs, but it will be ported eventually).
> 
> If a program targets >= Vista, aren't defines available you could check
> anyway?

Not necessarily. For example, the macros are typically not defined when 
building Boost itself. Also, if a program relies on Boost to provide 
abstraction over the OS API, it may well omit defining those macros too.