Re: [boost] The new Boost 17.0.0

On Wed, Dec 2, 2020 at 11:17 AM Marshall Clow via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

On Dec 2, 2020, at 10:08 AM, Peter Dimov via Boost wrote:

...

Ville Voutilainen wrote:

...

There's a non-zero amount of users to whom the lack of ABI stability in

boost is a reason not to touch boost with a ten-foot pole.

...

That's not common. It's very unusual to want to upgrade Boost without

recompiling the rest of the software. Typically the people who want ABI stability use the system-supplied Boost and it's fixed for the particular distro.

I must concur with Ville here; I have had several people tell me they won’t use Boost because “it changes with every release”.

[ Personally, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this attitude, but it *does* exist, and is not an isolated incident. ]

— Marshall

And I mentioned in a different reply, I think it's more about API instability for boost libraries -- or both. And I don't have much sympathy either. You've got the choice to stay on an older version. Or patch together your own. Awhile back I patched an older version of endian into a newer version of boost because the newer version removed features I was using and didn't have time to fix during the upgrade. The fact that it's open source gives people a lot of freedom.