[boost] Windows XP support survey

Subject: [boost] Windows XP support survey
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-05-06 06:03:19

The Boost SC suggested I ask about Microsoft Windows XP support in 
Boost libraries here, so I'd appreciate if library maintainers could 
state:

1. If they still support Microsoft Windows XP i.e. actively do not 
use APIs not supported by XP. And if SP3 is the only service pack 
supported, or if any XP is okay.

2. Whether they regularly test their libraries on a Windows XP 
machine to ensure their libraries work there.

3. Their personal opinion about when would be best to drop mandatory 
Microsoft Windows XP support. Individual library maintainers can of 
course choose to keep supporting it.

As we all know, Microsoft Windows XP is no longer supported by 
Microsoft as of April 2014, however a widely available registry tweak 
reenables support and updates until 2019. However Visual Studio 2012 
cannot run on XP, nor by default can produce binaries which execute 
on XP, so testing and developing for XP compatibility is going to 
become increasingly difficult. It may become wise to announce a date 
that XP support guarantees will be dropped, and any users needing XP 
support must remain on an older Boost version and/or make use of 
Boost modularity to mux their own Boost distro.

One big reason for thinking about this is that the first C++ 11 
mandatory Boost libraries are just around the corner, and they of 
course need VS2013 or even VS2015 and so therefore cannot promise 
Windows XP support.

There are also a number of post-XP APIs the assumption of which would 
make some library authors very pleased. For example, I would assume 
any Boost.Thread v5 would use the Vista only condvar APIs as one can 
then skip emulating condvars with win32 semaphores which would be an 
enormous saving of code complexity.

Niall

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