On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 3:07 PM, Stefan Strasser <strasser@uni-bremen.de> wrote:

why don't you write code for the oldest version you need to support? the documentation for some old versions is still online. just change the version number in the URL. even older versions should still be available for download.

boost library authors usually keep the breaking changes for new versions to a minimum and document them.
this is probably easier than backporting.

Yes, a perfectly sensible strategy, but one not available to me right at this moment,
since the backporting requirement emerged AFTER the code had been written!

On broader front the correct answer to my dilemma is obviously to standardise
on a dev environment including compilers, third party libs etc. I say 'obviously',
but in practise there seem to be innumerable political hurdles to overcome. Such
is the life of a production software engineer I guess, but really the hidden cost
of all this phaphing about must be immense!

- Rob.