Subject: Re: [boost] Any Chances for Boost Stable?
From: Phil Endecott (spam_from_boost_dev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-01-21 11:50:07
Artyom wrote:
> Is there any chance for Stable Boost version?
Boost is a collection of libraries with different characteristics. The
best that we can hope is that each individual library declares that it
is, for example:
- Stable, because it's a completed implementation of e.g. a tr1 or
c++0x feature that's not going to change.
- Stable, in the sense that new features will be added and old stuff at
worst deprecated (e.g. Spirit and its "classic" branch).
- Unstable, because it's a new library that's still evolving.
- Bah humbug this library maintainer doesn't want to tell you if it's
stable or not so you can assume the worst :-)
It would help for the docs to spell this out explicitly, but I think
most of us can probably guess the answers for the libraries that we use.
I have some experience of distributing source code that depends on
Boost, and there is an issue here. It's not reasonable to depend on a
single version of Boost since distributions only package -dev packages
for one version, which could be too new or too old. As a result I tend
to avoid dependencies on libraries that I suspect are unstable in this
sort of code.
There is much less of a problem if you either rely on distributions to
establish compatibility or if you distribute binaries.
Regards, Phil.