Hello everyone, this is closely related to the thread about "A possible date for dropping c++03 support" (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/boost-developers-archive/i4UM-GfNu8w), but this is NOT meant as a vote on the suggestion, and I'd ask you to keep discussions to that thread. For the actually important part, please scroll down to the double line (===) For reference however, my suggestion was that c++03 support is officially dropped somewhere around early 2020 across all of boost. Which would mean, that from then onwards any library author could start to unconditionally use c++11 features in his library without prior announcement or transition period, even if other boost libraries that currently support c++03 have a dependency on it. (Again, if you have questions or comments about this, please answer on the other thread) Somewhat late, I realized I first should have asked if / how much actual interest there is from the side of the library maintainers in the first place, because whatever the majority of the people on the ML thinks, it obviously won't have any effect if the actually affected people don't have any interest in using c++11 in the first place. Full disclosure: I'm not a boost contributor myself (at least nothing significant) but as a user, I have an interest in boost libraries becoming simpler, less entangled with each other and providing less types that are redundant in c++11 and later. You could call that more lightweight but that is a different topic. So, to get some idea if there is any interest in this topic, I'd ask each maintainer that is currently maintaining a c++03 compatible library to answer the following questions: =======Please quote from here ====================================== - Which library/ies are you maintaining? (I assume this isn't some sort of private information - otherwise ignore the question) - Would you like to unconditionally use c++11 features if you would not have to worry about this breaking boost internal users? - Would you like to unconditionally use c++11 features if you would not have to worry about this breaking any users? - Would you deprecate your library completely if there were no boost-internal users and your current dependencies required c++11 (e.g. because your library has been merged into the c++11 standard library anyway) - Are you yourself using any boost library (in an up-to-date version) in a c++03, non-boost project? - Do you have any Idea if the latest versions of your library is used by any important/significant number of c++02 projects? [It is only important if *you* consider those projects important and or the number significant] =======Please quote till here ====================================== Note: When I'm talking about breaking users I mean breaking due to requiring c++11 compiler, not because you completely rewrite the API based on new c++11 idoms - that would probably better be done in a completely new library. Best regards and thank you for your time Mike