Re: [Boost-users] [all libs] compatibility

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [all libs] compatibility
From: Scott McMurray (me22.ca+boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-03-29 14:21:24

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 08:48, Pace, Antony [Harman Pro Group UK]
<antony.pace_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> I see other messages on this forum about platform compatibility and am getting more and more disillusioned with Boost.  I thought the whole point was that boost libraries only needed a compliant compiler.
>

There are two kinds of Boost libraries:
1) Compliant implementations of complex things possible in ISO C++,
like Spirit for parsing
2) Libraries to access fundamentally OS-specific things not provided
by ISO C++, like Filesystem and Asio

It's impossible to write the latter category of things so you only
need a compliant compiler, and the boost libraries *are* the
platform-independant interfaces.  Their implementations are usually
not put behind some other interface because the efficient ways of
doing things are often different between them, and hiding the
differences inside another layer would lose some -- or most -- of that
efficiency.

~ Scott