From: Thomas Witt (witt_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-01-31 00:45:42
Jeff,
Jeff Garland wrote:
>
> I like your breakdown although we might need another category like
> 'experimental' to describe newer compilers that are partially supported or
> might be supported in the future -- although maybe it's the same as unsupported.
See below.
>
> Anyway, here's how I'd categorize the current set of compilers on the
> regression page:
>
> Supported;
> vc7.1
> vc8.x
> intel9_x
> cw9_4
> gcc3.x
> gcc4.x
> tru64cxx71-xx
FWIW we just added QNX to this list.
>
> Deprecated:
> intel8_x
> tru64cxx65-xx
>
> Unsupported:
> borland 5_6_x
> cw8_x
> dmc
> gcc2.95.x
> sunpro
> vc6
> vc7
>
> I know -- that's a pretty aggressive cut in supported compilers, but I think
> it's time to let boost developers focus on new libraries instead of porting.
Hmm… our disagreement might be mostly about terminology. First of all I
was never really happy with the category names but I failed to find
better ones.
Thinking about it again. The reason might be that we have to deal with
two different issues when we talk about compiler support. The easy part
are outdated compilers. For those it's easy to say we don't care (that's
basically the meaning of unsupported and also in some way for
deprecated). The hard part are compilers that just aren't compliant
enough to support all of boost without heroic efforts by library
writers. This category of compilers is the reason for the weasel wording
used to describe the fully supported category. The intend is to say
we make a reasonable effort, document the limitations and provide
regression tests until these compilers reach the unsupported stage due
to obsoleteness.
As far as your list of unsupported compilers goes. I do feel
uncomfortable with just dropping most of them without first deprecating
them. This does not mean we should put effort into improving support for
them 1.34 we just should not break them incidentally. As far as sunpro
goes I'd like to see that one in fully/partially supported.
Thomas
-- Thomas Witt witt_at_[hidden]