----- Mensaje original ----- De: David Abrahams <dave@boost-consulting.com> Fecha: Jueves, Marzo 11, 2004 9:19 pm Asunto: [boost] Re: Boost 2 - development in long term
Robert Geiman <rgeiman@buckeye-express.com> writes:
My point is, there will be a point in time where most compilers support template partial specialization, etc, and all that extra code> that adds support to outdated compilers is way more trouble than it'll be worth. We obviously aren't at that point right now, but at some point we will be.
I don't think having Boost 2.x contain NO compiler hacks is a good thing, but it would be nice if there was a Boost feature list of all C++ features compilers must support to use Boost. These features could be added to the list when it's generally accepted that most compilers support these features, so then library writers can stop writing hacks to support those outdates compilers and even remove hacks to make the code smaller, cleaner, and easier to understand and maintain.
Not that I love the idea of Boost 2 (B2 in the following), but maybe there's a reasonably manageable way to automate some of the process of converting Boost libraries into B2 form: * Identify the few compilers/stdlibs qualifying as B2 * Take the set of BOOST_NO_XXX macros in Boost.Config applying to any of the B2 compilers/stdlibs. Let us call these B2 defects. * Create an automatic tool that takes the source code of a B1 library and: - remove all #ifdef BOOST_NO_XXX sections where BOOST_NO_XXX is *not* a B2 defect. - remove all BOOST_WORKAROUND sections where the compiler/stdlib is not B2. This tool hopefully would give a compilable B2 source code, or at least something simple to get correct by manual postprocessing. Joaquín M López Muñoz Telefónica, Investigación y Desarrollo