I mistakenly posted this here on the users list, rather than the developer's list. I have sent a copy to the developers list now. [ boost@lists.boost.org ] Any discussion should happen on the boost-developers list, not here. Sorry for the confusion. -- Marshall On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 7:52 AM Marshall Clow wrote:

In the thread "MSVC 2019 and 1.70 beta", there has been a discussion about what to do about support for MSVC 2019, which is due to be released right about the same time that Boost 1.70. One person suggested that we delay the boost release until after the MSVC release (I think the suggestion was "May").

This general question has been discussed before (several times), since tools get released fairly often - and so does Boost.

In general, I am not in favor of delaying boost releases in order to add support for 'about to be released' development tools. There are two main reasons for this:

* There's always another compiler / tool about to be released. Clang 8 is imminent - currently at RC5. GCC 9.1 is scheduled to be released in early May.

* Boost releases happen every four months. August is not really that far off. People who want support for tool XXXX can use "the trunk", getting it either from git or from bintray. [ Everyone knows about the tarballs at bintray, right? https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/master/ ]

Also, if we were to delay the boost release until May, then what would happen to the August release? The release process for 1.71.0 is scheduled to start at the end of June.

-- Marshall

On Thu, 14 Mar 2019 at 16:52, Marshall Clow via Boost-users < boost-users@lists.boost.org> wrote:

In the thread "MSVC 2019 and 1.70 beta", there has been a discussion about what to do about support for MSVC 2019, which is due to be released right about the same time that Boost 1.70. One person suggested that we delay the boost release until after the MSVC release (I think the suggestion was "May").

I was referring to *this* May [it's a European thing, better ignore it] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresa_May. I meant [and wrote] to delay it by the time it takes to cycle the tests (i.e measured in days, not weeks or months). This general question has been discussed before (several times), since

tools get released fairly often - and so does Boost.

In general, I am not in favor of delaying boost releases in order to add support for 'about to be released' development tools. There are two main reasons for this:

* There's always another compiler / tool about to be released. Clang 8 is imminent - currently at RC5. GCC 9.1 is scheduled to be released in early May.

Yes, yes, but this is a major release (a as per the latest releases, a 2 year event). * Boost releases happen every four months. August is not really that far

off. People who want support for tool XXXX can use "the trunk", getting it either from git or from bintray. [ Everyone knows about the tarballs at bintray, right? https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/master/ ]

But trunk has not been rubber-stamped, so (possibly) many users cannot use it. Also, if we were to delay the boost release until May, then what would

happen to the August release? The release process for 1.71.0 is scheduled to start at the end of June.

We are talking days, and as you say, Boost releases happen every 4 months, so what's the harm in delaying it some days? degski -- *"Big boys don't cry" - **Eric Stewart, Graham Gouldman*