Re: [boost] [release] 1.64.0 Delayed because of Microsoft (version numbers)

On 20 March 2017 at 13:43, Refael Ackermann via Boost wrote:

On Sun, 19 Mar 2017 08:10:37 -0500 Tom Kent via Boost wrote:

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On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 10:12 AM, Rene Rivera via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

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(B) The community decides what version number we should be using and the appropriate PRs are filed and applied and tested for all the repos involved. Which means:

1. The community has until 12:00 CDT US March 18 to decide on what the vc version number and tag should be.

2. The community must post PRs for the places where we reference VS2017 version numbers to the new number. Those are at least:

https://github.com/boostorg/config https://github.com/boostorg/build https://github.com/boostorg/boost https://github.com/boostorg/website

People have until 17:00 CDT Monday March 20 to submit those PRs.

3. The community can test the resulting master snapshot when available at the latest 24:00 Monday March 20.

4. If all goes well we can have a beta release on Wednesday March 22 (ie one week late).

I'm not sure how we'll coalesce around a consensus, but I figure we should lay out the options in one place. Even if this doesn't make it into the beta, we should be clear on this going forward.

Option 1 - 14.10 Use microsoft toolset version based on cl.exe version -5. This is the official version of the c++ toolset that microsoft has been pushing (somewhere). The new $(VCToolsVersion) macro is "14.10.25017", this macro is not available in previous versions of visual studio.

build bootstrap would use bootstrap.bat vc1410 build of source would use b2 toolset=msvc-14.10 build would generat libraries of the format libboost_NAME_vc1410-OPTIONS-1_64.lib config would auto-link libraries of the same format

Option 2 - 14.1 Use the abbreviated toolset version that microsoft uses for their toolset version. The $(PlatformToolsetVersion) macro is "141". In VS2015 this was "140".

build bootstrap would use bootstrap.bat vc141 build of source would use b2 toolset=msvc-14.1 build would generat libraries of the format libboost_NAME_vc141-OPTIONS-1_64.lib config would auto-link libraries of the same format

Option 3 - 15.0 Use the visual studio version. The $(VisualStudioVersion) macro is "15.0". In VS2015 this was "14.0".

build bootstrap would use bootstrap.bat vc15 build of source would use b2 toolset=msvc-15.0 build would generat libraries of the format libboost_NAME_vc150-OPTIONS-1_64.lib config would auto-link libraries of the same format

A alternative that could be made to any of the options 1-3 option would be to bring the b2 toolset in line with whatever we chose for the name, replacing the "msvc-" with "vc". For example option 1-a would be:

build bootstrap would use bootstrap.bat vc1410 build of source would use b2 toolset=vc1410 build would generat libraries of the format libboost_NAME_vc1410-OPTIONS-1_64.lib config would auto-link libraries of the same format

I *think* that is all the reasonable options. Let the consensus form!

I'm for Option 1. Might be more "breaking" but I think it'll be more future proof (i.e. vc1412 > vc1410 && 14.20 > 14.12 14.10).

I don't think this is argument holds strong in practice. AFAIK, PlatformToolseVersion and its derivatives used in Boost are never compared as range, like _MSC_VER often is, but as exact values. Boost tests for: v140 v141 and, if at any time Microsoft replaces it with, STL (tm): meow let it be so. Best regards, -- Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net