Re: The new Boost 17.0.0

From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-12-02 14:08:22

On 12/2/2020 5:12 AM, Andrey Semashev via Boost wrote:
> On 12/2/20 1:21 AM, Edward Diener via Boost wrote:
>>
>> I believe the great majority of Boost libraries attempt to maintain 
>> ABI compatibility between releases.
> 
> My impression is the opposite. Boost has never declared backward ABI or 
> API compatibility. There's a reason why binary distributions of Boost 
> append a version tag that matches Boost version to packages and binaries.

Whether Boost declares it or not I do not think Boost libraries change 
the API or ABI very often between releases and, if they do, they will 
notify the end-user about it. But of course you are correct that their 
is no attempt at a policy that claims compatibility between releases.

> 
>> But just like with compilers it is not always possible between releases.
> 
> You have to give credit to libstdc++ developers at the very least. It 
> maintains backward ABI compatibility across all C++ standard versions 
> and across libstdc++ releases for many years. I think, libc++ also does 
> the same, although I'm not following its development.

So are you telling me that if I have gcc-10.2 I should be able to use 
the gcc-5.1 libstdc without any ABI problems ?