On 14 October 2013 17:20, Robert Ramey wrote:
I realize that I've asked this before - but I never got a response which I found convincing. I'll try to ask my question better this time.
The question - What is the value of undertaking this task.
Let's look at the value of according to the type of boost participant.
a) boost user - all this code in config and the libraries is internal to the libraries. After this change the look and usage of boost will not change at all. - no benefit and no cost to the boost user.
I consider myself a "boost user" as I haven't contributed more than a few patches, but I often have to look at the implementations Even as a standard library author I find Boost code to be baroque and hard to follow, due largely to all the preprocessor conditions needed to support ancient non-standard compilers. I highly appreciate removing the cruft, it makes it much easier to read and debug Boost code, as a user.
c) boost users on older platforms. They are to be stuck with the boost 1.54. I don't know how big this group is but I'm sure it has some members. A big loss for this (probably small) group as they won't benefit from things like bug fixes and enhancements.
They can always pay someone to backport fixes to they version they use.