On 1 April 2016 at 06:47, Paul Mensonides
You're right, approaching it this way. vs2015 Update 2 is the only compiler that "needs" support, as it will compile code that runs on W7SP1, W8.1 and W10 (as they are the M$ supported OSes). In a world of open source and free (as in beer) compilers/OSes, this is not an issue, just upgrade to the latest and greatest. The latter, is M$'s goal, get the whole world on W10 and have forced upgrades (with a 3 month delay of execution for the enterprise edition). A lot of (in particular) companies dont' seem to like that, apparently. VC++ being the "de facto" compiler on the platform is a huge part of the
problem.
I don't really see what you intend to say here. Their platform, their compiler. Moreover, no C++ code should have to support any compiler whatsoever. Boost doesn't have to support VC++ either, correct, but it does it's best to do so. Code should target the standard. Compilers should target the standard.
Any temporary workarounds for bugs or missing features should be exactly that: temporary.
AFAIK that's what M$ is working at. Windows pre-dates Linux by over 5 years, i.e. no gcc/clang whatever. Windows predates "The Standard", you are referring to, by 13 years. The bugs and missing features ARE temporary, their time-frame differs from yours, though. M$ suffers from legacy code like any other company. Being commmercial and supporting a huge user base, I can see that they don't re-write the OS in one go, i.e. they depend on the bad choices of the past. degski