Re: Suggested policy for dropping C++03 support in Boost libraries

From: Rob Stewart (rstewart_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-11-08 13:12:50

On November 7, 2019 5:18:28 PM EST, Stefan Seefeld via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> 
> On 2019-11-07 4:42 p.m., Rob Stewart via Boost wrote:
> >
> > On November 7, 2019 3:10:12 PM EST, Peter Dimov via Boost
> <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> >> We need a policy on phasing out C++03 support in Boost.
>
> I thought library authors already were at liberty to require C++11 for
> their project. Are you suggesting that at this point in time all Boost
> libraries are supposed to be compatible with C++03 ?

Peter is only documenting how to go about making the transition, but my expectation is that it will encourage authors and maintainers to make the transition.

> > Consider the alternate path of bumping the major version. There are
> a lot of libraries that will have to drop 03 simultaneously, so that
> would be signified clearly by a move to Boost v2.
> >
> > There may be some tooling that assumes v1, but really, isn't it time
> to use the major version number?
> 
> I never understood our versioning (numbering) scheme. Given that we 
> don't have any metric to measure the degree of (in-)compatibility 
> between two distinct Boost releases, I always thought a simple 
> monotonically increasing number would be the simplest. Let's just get 
> rid of the "1." as a meaningless prefix, rather than invent some 
> semantics around an illusion.

Some tools probably expected a major and minor version number. (Even if that was the case, it may no longer be so.)

I suppose a v2 of Boost is illusory, so there's something to your idea.
--
Rob
(Sent from my portable computation device.)