Re: [Boost-users] Version Mgmt classes/algorithms

From: Rob Lemley (rclemley_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-01-27 09:54:06

Noel Yap wrote:
> On 1/26/06, Rich Johnson <rjohnson_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> 
>>On Jan 26, 2006, at 11:58 AM, Noel Yap wrote:
>>FWIW, a "compiler compatibility" is  probably required when dealing
>>with separately compiled modules.
> 
> 
> You're right.  I hadn't considered that.  I'll add it to my list of
> caveats.  Oh, wait, it just occurred to me that I would take care of
> this by encoding architecture, compiler, and compiler flags into the
> installation directory name.

You might also desire to encode the compiler version or at least the ABI
version.  For example, the ABI can change in between compiler version
releases for the GCC collection.  Also, the default allocator is a
build-time option for GCC's g++ compiler, which can make modules
compiled with the same version of the compiler incompatible if the
compilers were built with different default allocators, even though the
compiler version is the same.  This may be beyond the scope of automatic
version management, but underscores the need for the version management
process to account for "compiler compatibility".

Some discussion of c++ ABI and versioning in the c++ std lib which may
also be pertinent to versioning in large systems:
http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/abi.html