On Mon, 5 Aug 2013, at 02:12 PM, Stephen Kelly wrote:
On 08/05/2013 01:46 PM, Daniel James wrote:
On 05.08.2013 14:33, Daniel James wrote:
So I'm inclined to agree to whatever you want ;-) But perhaps more to the point we should be doing whatever our users want - so perhaps it would be better to open up a discussion on boost-users on which compilers we can drop and work from there. I'll do that this evening. I don't think that many of the boost users really read the boost-users newsgroup. It would be nice to create a poll at the boost.org site. I'll put a request up on the site, but I don't think a poll is appropriate. Will probably just ask for emails from anyone using older compilers. I'm not sure if people check the site either, but I think a few people are subscribed to the news rss feed and a news item can be
On Mon, 5 Aug 2013, at 01:29 PM, Sergey Cheban wrote: linked to.
If anyone is feeling keen they could set something up. It might be a good idea at some point to do a survey of boost users.
What happened to 'users of ancient compilers can use ancient boost' ?
Nothing. Some people may agree, but it was never accepted as a principle. I don't think it's a reasonable thing to say unless we were to create stable releases and continue to support them.
Given that boost is quite explicit that it doesn't guarantee source or binary compatibility,
That's irrelevant. And just because something isn't guaranteed, it doesn't mean that no one cares.
I don't see why bumping a compiler requirement from one set of antiques to another slightly more recent set of antiques is an issue that needs to be suspended for a long time with so much red tape as user surveys.
It's hardly a bureaucratic nightmare. It will probably require less effort than this thread. I think I have a good idea what the answer will be, but it'd be good to check. The survey was just a vague suggestion for the future ("at some point") that will probably never be picked up, although I do think it'd be helpful. We really don't have enough information about our users.
Users of ancient compilers can use ancient boost. Given that you have no complaints from anyone using an antique with the recent boost releases, and given that many people in this thread have repeated that many libraries do not work with the antiques and they are not tested anyway, you have a good case to assume that the impact of bumping the requirement is very low.
"Many libraries" is not the same as "all libraries".
You don't need user surveys. Please just commit the patches today and move on :). Let progress happen and get out of the way :).
You seem convinced that the change will have no effect, so why do you think people will block it? This is quite a big change, it shouldn't be rushed. Config needs to be conservative about change, perhaps more than any other part of boost.