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

Subject: Re: [boost] [winapi] Default target Windows version
From: Olaf van der Spek (olaf_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-10-16 07:20:10

On 16-10-2013 12:13, Andrey Semashev wrote:
> 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.

Right. Would this create a new set of library variants and allow me to 
build both the XP and Vista variants? Some programs might need the XP 
variants while others might need the Vista ones.

 > Also, if a program relies on Boost to provide
> abstraction over the OS API, it may well omit defining those macros too.

True, but then these programs might as well just define the official 
defines instead of the Boost one.

Olaf