Re: [boost] Recommend dropping test coverage on msvc-7.1 and msvc-8.0

On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 9:02 AM, Daniel James via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

On 14 October 2017 at 12:41, James E. King, III via Boost wrote:

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It looks like a large number of libraries will no longer build properly against them based on this report. I'm not sure what the procedure is to come to an agreement to drop a compiler in a release, but it looks like

we

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should consider dropping msvc-7.1 and msvc-8.0. These are very old compilers for Windows development. Dropping them would also allow folks to more easily focus on failures in this report to make sure a release is as clean as possible and simplify the test matrix a little bit.

They can now be marked as unusable from your very own repo, I haven't documented it yet, but an example that does that:

https://github.com/boostorg/contract/blob/develop/meta/ explicit-failures-markup.xml

That will grey out the results in the test matrix, making it easier to read, and there's no need to drop the test results for anyone who finds them useful.

Thanks that is useful! I'm still concerned about limiting the scope of reasonable testing effort and compiler support to reduce the amount of maintenance and test matrix systems for the project overall. It seems fairly clear from those test matrix results that msvc-7.1 and msvc-8.0 are no longer healthily supported by many libraries, and as previously stated both of those compiler suites are past end of support. I think that result matrix is most useful when it doesn't have that many things in it, so folks can focus on closing down a release. I'm not sure if graying out the items will help identify problem spots. If there was a way to filter out certain toolset identifiers, on the page, that might solve that problem. - Jim