Re: [boost] [config] Removing support for old compilers: do we have aconsensus yet?

Subject: Re: [boost] [config] Removing support for old compilers: do we have aconsensus yet?
From: Peter Dimov (lists_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-01-21 16:08:49

John Maddock wrote:
> Folks,
>
> As you know Boost.Config has had it's support for old compilers stripped 
> out, and this is a controversial change.
>
> We're now at the point where I'd really like to get the routine 
> changes/updates into release, but to do that we need a final decision on 
> whether to keep (and release) Steven Kelly's changes in develop.
>
> So do we have a final decision?

I am in favor of removing support for compilers that don't support partial 
specialization, partial ordering and void returns, notably MSVC 6.0/7.0. 
Dropping support for GCC < 3 would probably be uncontroversial as well. Not 
sure about the others.

I wonder however how this should be done. Just removing the macro 
definitions from the config compiler headers is not enough because people 
can in principle use their own configs. Might it perhaps be better to leave 
the compiler headers intact and just warn/#error in suffix.hpp when an 
unsupported macro is set?