On 07/07/2025 14:45, Artyom Beilis via Boost wrote:
Boost breaking compatibility is the Achilles heel of Boost since I remember it (around 1.33) and it had never changed. It makes Boost highly problematic - almost irrelevant for any long term C++ project that needs to run over a large range of platforms that provide its own Boost. More than that, Boost is almost impossible to use in libraries or other interfaces because of breaking API/ABI virtually in any situation.
I've said this many times. This should not be an issue. Every library at some point breaks with the past and go ahead, for many reason, maintanance, readability etc... And for that reason we also have the X.Y.Z version numbering where - Z: number updated when there are minor bugfixes but no API changes - Y: number updated when there are API changes and updated of the featured but maintaining API compatibility - X: number updated when there are API changes that make the library not compatible with previous versions. It's true that there's a lot of legacy code that uses boost and cannot be upgraded to new compilers or standards, but it's also true that they can remain stuck with their own boost version, the one that works. In my opinion at some point it will be necessary to break compatibility with old standards and compilers, update boost, remove old legacy code that at this point will be useless and start Boost 2.0. Users of old versions can use the 1.Y.Z version of boost, they don't stop working because a new version is out, and it's possible to decide a maintanance period of time, i.e. one year, for which we can release 1.Y.ZZ versions that fixes bugs in this main branch of boost, if needed. It's not different from about many other companies do with their libraries, and this will allow a migration to a more efficient boost that must do not handle a lot of compilers and standards and architectures, and maintain the old version for an amount of time that we can decide.
If Boost break building via b2 (non-CMake), Boost will damage reputation again. [Sarcasm ON] I don't think anybody but Boost maintainers will notices [Sarcasm Off]
Maybe. A lot of people uses b2 for building boost, instead of using vcpkg, conan and so on. Daniele