Re: [boost] [EXTERNAL] [graph] Sync develop with master?

Subject: Re: [boost] [EXTERNAL] [graph] Sync develop with master?
From: Gavin Lambert (gavinl_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-08-10 20:40:44

On 11/08/2016 08:38, Murray Cumming wrote:
> Can't they stick with older versions of BGL? People didn't seem to need
> the fixes in the recent releases for the last couple of years, because
> develop didn't get merged to master - they were effectively using an
> old version with not much more than a version number change. They would
> only be forced to use a newer BGL because of the bundling of BGL with
> other Boost libraries that they might want to upgrade.
>
> But this is a general Boost issue, I guess, and I don't know of any
> guidelines. I think Boost has to drop support for older compilers at
> some point so the Boost code can move forward with clean code. I've
> found that things like variadic templates and decltype(auto) can
> massively simplify generic code.

Perhaps not a guideline, but in the past several libraries that have 
wanted to go C++11/14-only have done so by retaining the existing 
library as C++03+ and creating a new library (eg. bgl2) that is 
C++11/14-only.

This also provides a good opportunity for making other breaking changes 
to the API to remove legacy things or to take advantage of more modern 
coding styles -- although on the other hand there's also a certain 
benefit to allow user applications to simply change the include path and 
namespace and have their existing code Just Workâ„¢.

FWIW, to me it still seems like C++14 support is sketchy and can't be 
assumed.  C++11 is reasonably commonplace but there are still some 
applications that can't use it for whatever reason.