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

Subject: Re: [boost] [winapi] Default target Windows version
From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-10-23 09:21:40

On Wednesday 23 October 2013 15:35:39 Sergey Cheban wrote:
> On 23.10.2013 0:56, Peter Dimov wrote:
> > A somewhat reasonable compromise would be to only default to Vista for
> > VC++
> > versions targeting Vista by default (VS2010, or was that VS2012?), and to
> > XP for previous releases. If someone is still on VS2005 (say), he
> > probably doesn't want to only run on Vista.
> 
> 1. It is also possible to support the MsBuild toolsets (i.e. v120, v120_xp
> or Windows7.1SDK). Unfortunately, toolsets mean something different for the
> boost build system.
> In the tools/build/v2/tools/msvc.jam I see only the following:
> # Known toolset versions, in order of preference.
> .known-versions = 12.0 11.0 10.0 10.0express 9.0 9.0express 8.0 8.0express
> 7.1 7.1toolkit 7.0 6.0 ;
> 
> 2. Please note that there is also the Windows Runtime API. To use it, one
> has to define WINAPI_FAMILY=WINAPI_FAMILY_APP (by default, windows.h
> defines WINAPI_FAMILY=WINAPI_FAMILY_DESKTOP_APP).

I don't think that the compiler or toolset used to build the application 
should determine the target platform, unless the particular toolset is not 
able to target the particular platform. Versions of the target OS and the 
toolset are not related in general. I mean, I can use whatever version of GCC 
or Intel compiler to build for any Windows, so why should MSVC be different?