Re: The new Boost 17.0.0

From: Rainer Deyke (rdeyke_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-11-28 10:02:10

On 28.11.20 00:25, Emil Dotchevski via Boost wrote:
> Deleting support for C++11 and older versions means breaking user code.
> Therefore, forking means fracturing of the community. I don't see how this
> is helpful to the users.

The current status quo is that individual library maintainers can choose 
to drop support for old C++ standards at any time.  This means that user 
are often stuck on a specific version of the 1.x line.  From a user 
perspective, forking is an improvement over the status quo: it means 
that Boost can guarantee that the 1.x line can stop dropping support for 
old C++ standards, making it relatively safe to upgrade within the 1.x line.

One of the big weaknesses of Boost, from a user perspective, is the way 
releases are handled, with each release potentially containing breaking 
changes bundled along with the bug fixes and new features.  What I'd 
really like to see is a policy where breaking changes are reserved for 
major (x.0) versions, with minor (x.y) versions only containing bug 
fixes and backwards-compatible new features.  Since the major versions 
aren't expected to be completely backwards-compatible, they could make 
relatively bold changes like dropping obsolete libraries.

(The drawback of this approach is of course that on the developer side 
it's a lot more work to support multiple versions of a library in 
parallel.  I have deliberately taken a user-centric view here.)

-- 
Rainer Deyke (rainerd_at_[hidden])