Re: [Boost-users] Supporting Visual Studio 6 in boost

From: Nicola Musatti (nmusatti_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-12-12 04:57:35

Mathieu Malaterre <mathieu.malaterre <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> Hi there,

Hallo, Mathieu.
I've been involved in providing workarounds for the last couple of releases of
the Borland/CodeGear compiler, mostly for Boost 1.33.1 and 1.34.x .
[...]
>   How much time consuming is it ?

In principle a lot, and it gets worse with every new release, as most Boost
developers are now using reasonably compliant compilers as their principal
development platform and have become accustomed to relying on the full
expressive power of C++, and rightly so.

> Are there plan to actually drop it at some point ?

I believe each developer is free to do as he/she wants, both in terms of
actively working on specific compiler support and in accepting patches for their
libraries.

> Were there cases where you had to provide a duplicate implementation
> (partial specialization, template template parameter, SFINAE...) with
> slight modifications, therefore making the boost code more difficult
> to maintain ?

No, because of lack of time and because I'm not the author of any Boost library.
This means that some libraries just don't work with older compilers. The next
release, 1.35, is going to raise the bar a lot as many libraries rely on SFINAE.

> How much did this compiler impact the design of boost API / internals ?

Speaking for the Borland one, it probably did for some libraries, such as Regex
and Serialization. This has probably been more of a factor with older libraries,
as some 5-6 years ago the Borland compiler was on a par if not better with both
VC++ and g++. However, being less popular than the other two, less effort was
spent in providing workarounds for its limitations.

Cheers,
Nicola Musatti