Boost logo

Boost :

Subject: [boost] [container][interprocess][intrusive][move] Removing support for old compilers
From: Ion Gaztañaga (igaztanaga_at_[hidden])
Date: 2018-10-01 13:58:56


Hi,

My libraries have supported quite old compilers, starting from Visual
2003 and GCC 3.4 and I'm asking for feedback before I start dropping old
compilers. The number of supported plus locally+regression tested
versions has increased a lot these years and that's a lot of work with
reduced benefits.

I run locally for:

- From Mingw GCC 3.4 to GCC 8.1, all released minor versions (combining
C++03-C++11-C++14-C++14).

- From MSVC 7.1 to MSVC 14.1, all released versions (default language
standard).

I also run boost regression tests for many of those compilers (see
"igaztanaga-*" runners in
https://www.boost.org/development/tests/master/developer/summary.html).

The number of supported and tested compilers is now unmanageable for me
as many of those have specific warnings/bugs that I try to fix. So I was
thinking about reducing that list a bit dropping support for the oldest
ones and replacing them with recent GCC/Clang from WSL (Windows
Subsystem for Linux).

My first idea is to drop anything older than 10 years, which means that
the minimum will be MSVC 9.0 and GCC 4.3 (both released in 2008).

I've reviewed some popular long support Linux distributions:

-> RHEL 6 uses GCC 4.4.
-> SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 4 (SP4) uses GCC 4.3

Microsoft no longer supports Visual 2008 (support ended on April 2018)
but I can continue compiling and testing it at least for another year.

Note that my libraries will continue support for -std=C++03, but I will
not find workarounds or fixes for old GCC and MSVC versions.

Thoughts, problems, comments?

Best,

Ion


Boost list run by bdawes at acm.org, gregod at cs.rpi.edu, cpdaniel at pacbell.net, john at johnmaddock.co.uk