2010/1/21 Stewart, Robert <Robert.Stewart@sig.com>
Various Linux distributions offer their own take on stable Boost versions. Folks go through a great deal of effort to create versioned Boost packages. I suspect some even apply patches to earlier versions. That doesn't help Mac OS or Windows users, of course.
My suggestion is Boost.org is just getting support from port maintainers for various operating systems. I guess UNIX-like are most important ones, since they often use a repository for applications. For example, for FreeBSD we do not update to the next release until we patch Boost enough for all dependent applications to compile and run. What I prefer is boost.org folks do not just compile boost on FreeBSD (OpenBSD, OS Y, whatever) in an own way and say "Hey, it works on that OS!", but just wait for all port maintainers to confirm the libraries are good enough to go into the release. Of course, this may make release cycle longer for a couple of weeks, but the stability worth it. The great number of dependent applications getting re-built with the updated boost libraries may even detect some binary incompatibility issues. So then, just outsource some testing and you'll get both source compatibility and binary compatibility reports virtually for free. Sincerely, Alexander Churanov, maintainer of devel/boost-* for FreeBSD