Re: [boost] Recommend dropping test coverage on msvc-7.1 and msvc-8.0

Subject: Re: [boost] Recommend dropping test coverage on msvc-7.1 and msvc-8.0
From: Tom Kent (lists_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-10-14 13:54:28

On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 6:41 AM, James E. King, III via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> MSVC 7.1 and MSVC 8.0 are currently listed as "tested" in the Boost 1.65.1
> release notes however there are a lot of projects that do not seem to
> support them well, if at all:
>
> http://www.boost.org/development/tests/master/developer/issues.html
> <http://www.boost.org/development/tests/develop/developer/issues.html>
>
> It looks like a large number of libraries will no longer build properly
> against them based on this report.  I'm not sure what the procedure is to
> come to an agreement to drop a compiler in a release, but it looks like we
> should consider dropping msvc-7.1 and msvc-8.0.  These are very old
> compilers for Windows development.  Dropping them would also allow folks to
> more easily focus on failures in this report to make sure a release is as
> clean as possible and simplify the test matrix a little bit.
>
> Appveyor only supports back to Visual Studio 2010 at this point, so our
> ability to get pre-commit checks on compilers before msvc-10.0 is solely
> based on maintainer effort.  I suspect this effort is no longer justified
> based on the age of the compilers.
>
> Thanks - Jim
>

It seems like there is a big gap between 7.1 and 8.0 in terms of support.
It looks like there are only a handful of libraries that have failures in
8.0 that then pass in >13.0. On the other hand, 7.1 has a lot of libraries
(maybe the majority) with additional failures. Indeed when doing the binary
builds with each release, there have been a lot of failures since 1.45 and
I haven't included it in any binary releases since then. On the other hand,
8.0 still builds successfully for all the libraries that we build binaries
for.

That said, I've been expecting that any day now we'll have issues building
something or other for 8.0 and 9.0...if that happens I'll stop building the
binary releases for them at that time.

The real problem with saying that a version isn't supported is deciding
which one. Some libraries probably work back with Visual Studio 6.0! On the
other hand, some of the new libraries only work with the very latest
versions...excluding some that are still supported by Microsoft. Maybe an
explanation that support is actually on a per-library basis and not
something determined at the boost project level would be good to add to the
documentation.

Tom