On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 9:40 PM, Robert Ramey
Andrey Semashev wrote:
d) maintainers of boost libraries. When I first raised this question, I was assured that it would be totally transparent to me and that I would not have to be concerned about it. Hmmm - well OK - as long I don't have to wade in and muck around with ten year old code - (don't even think about addressing any changes which make old data sets unreadable). My worst nightmare is having to go back and re-debug 20 thousand lines of code running on 10 different compilers. Recent postings have made me doubt that one can really undertake this and guarentee that I won't have to do this.
I didn't really understand your point here. Do you intend to support the old compilers, even if Boost in general drops them?
I don't intend to specifically support old compilers - I don't intend to drop support for them either as it's already in there.
These are exclusive statements. Unless you regularly test your library on old compilers, the library can already be not working with them. This may be due to some fix/improvement/feature in the library, or to some change in a dependent library. Note that the compilers we're dropping are not tested by any of the testers, so you would have to run the tests yourself.
Actually I don't intend to do any work on the serialization library that doesn't add functionality. It looks like that if this goes through, I'll have to to go back and re-debug the library to support a decrease of functionallity - not something I can justify the investment of time in - not to say that's it's no fun at all.
Sorry, but I still don't understand. No one is removing any functionality, only the workarounds needed to make the library work on some broken compiler. Why would you need to spend time ensuring that the library no longer works on that compiler when the workarounds are removed?
My understanding is that the most immediate benefit is exactly for Boost library maintainers. Dropping support for ancient compilers simplifies code (Boost.Config included), makes it more easily maintainable.
on NEW libraries - but it has the potential of creating huge amount of unpleasant work for older libraries. - with not net benefit to anyone.
I was specifically referring to the current (and more likely, older) libraries in Boost, not the new ones. It is implied that the new libraries have no such issue.