Stephen Kelly wrote:
People writing new source code are not going to check if it worked with all compilers pretending to be MSVC 7.1 (but not actually MSVC 7.1) and wrap it in an ifdef. We bumped the compiler requirement so that they don't have to do that.
I don't understand. We bumped the compiler requirements for MSVC. We did not bump the compiler requirements for all other compilers that define _MSC_VER. Perhaps some of them define it to 1200 or 1300. Not emulating MSVC 7.1 features is not a reason to disqualify a compiler.
* Removal of near-duplicate code * Removal of obsolete workarounds (pulling in dependencies),
These do not apply to the cases I have in mind, which use _MSC_VER properly and not incorrectly, and in which the only change is from #if defined( _MSC_VER ) && _MSC_VER >= ... to #if defined( _MSC_VER ) Nothing is removed, nothing is obsolete, nothing is simplified. I see no upside here.