On 2018-12-12 10:30 a.m., Robert Ramey via Boost wrote:
On 12/12/18 6:53 AM, James E. King III via Boost wrote:
During the Boost 1.69.0 release there was a regression on Visual Studio 2005 (msvc-8.0). Microsoft ended support for msvc-8.0 on December 4, 2016. I was going to argue we let it happen, but it wasn't the right time to discuss that sort of change.
Boost has a very large compatibility matrix which increases the effort required, and sometimes limits solutions development, to get out a quality release. The boost project as a whole agreed in summer 2018 that if repository maintainers wanted to drop C++03 support per repository to make substantial improvements or simplifications, or to ease maintenance then they are able to do so. *Folks who need support for older language levels and older compilers can always download an older version of Boost.*
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If we consider boost more of a federation of libraries rather than one large "library", then we can just leave the decision of level of support up to the lean maintainer. Boost has required that libraries support the latest C++ standard. Anything other than that is optional. So I don't believe that this requires forming any consensus.
I agree. However, given that at present a lot of effort is put into testing Boost as a whole, I think it makes sense to ask whether this is a good point to drop testers running with obsoleted compiler versions. Stefan -- ...ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin...