Backward compatibility

Subject: Backward compatibility
From: Mateusz Loskot (mateusz_at_[hidden])
Date: 2018-07-04 12:13:46

Hi,

We're shaking off the Grand Merge, releasing
significant GIL update with Boost 1.68 and
soon we will be able to move forward (towards GIL 3?).

I've already started removing lots of dependencies
from Boost itself, replacing them with C++11.
The one more challenging is removal of Boost.TypeTraits
and some bits of MPL [1].
This experience made me wonder how we should approach
significant changes in the API, structure of public headers, etc.
for backward compatibility.

I've realised, Boost guidelines are receiving related update [2]

Here, I'm trying to plant a seed, so we can think about it and
discuss it sooner than later to not to hold back efforts :)

BTW, after Boost 1.68 is out, my personal priorities list for GIL is
clean-up, clean-up, clean-up:
- replace Boost with C++11
- remove any dead code legacies
- refactor, modernise and update tests
- clean up and unify source code to make it more pleasant to work with
Once that is done, I'm going to move to new features.
However we will discuss details as we go.

[1] https://github.com/boostorg/gil/pull/107
[2] https://github.com/boostorg/website/pull/300

Best regards,
-- 
Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net