Re: [boost] [config] Rethinking feature macros?

Subject: Re: [boost] [config] Rethinking feature macros?
From: Peter Dimov (lists_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-11-06 14:41:48

Andrey Semashev wrote:

> I don't see much of a problem with the negative form. The idea is that the 
> macros indicate compiler defects wrt. the latest standard (plus the 
> positive form macros for non-standard features), which I think makes 
> sense. This way the number of defined macros tend to be always low on good 
> compilers, which is probably better than having them continuously grow 
> over time.

This was the case ten years ago but not now. You can no longer derive any 
quality metric by what a compiler supports. gcc 6 is not a non-good 
compiler, it just defaults to C++14. VS 2017 15.3 is not a non-good 
compiler, it's just not 15.5 yet. Given the new pace of the standard, there 
will never be any longer a point at which a good compiler will be 
macro-free, as there will always be things left to implement because they 
were added after the compiler shipped.