[boost] [container][interprocess][intrusive][move] Removing support for old compilers

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