Re: The new Boost 17.0.0

From: Jeff Garland (azswdude_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-12-03 23:41:19

On Wed, Dec 2, 2020 at 11:17 AM Marshall Clow via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> On Dec 2, 2020, at 10:08 AM, Peter Dimov via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]>
> wrote:
> >
> > Ville Voutilainen wrote:
> >
> >> There's a non-zero amount of users to whom the lack of ABI stability in
> boost is a reason not to touch boost with a ten-foot pole.
> >
> > That's not common. It's very unusual to want to upgrade Boost without
> recompiling the rest of the software. Typically the people who want ABI
> stability use the system-supplied Boost and it's fixed for the particular
> distro.
>
> I must concur with Ville here; I have had several people tell me they
> won’t use Boost because “it changes with every release”.
>
> [ Personally, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this attitude, but it
> *does* exist, and is not an isolated incident. ]
>
> — Marshall
>

And I mentioned in a different reply, I think it's more about API
instability for boost libraries -- or both.  And  I don't have much
sympathy either.  You've got the choice to stay on an older version.  Or
patch together your own.  Awhile back I patched an older version of endian
into a newer version of boost because the newer version removed features I
was using and didn't have time to fix during the upgrade.  The fact that
it's open source gives people a lot of freedom.