Beman Dawes writes:
At 11:35 AM 10/6/2004, Aleksey Gurtovoy wrote:
The original rationale was "to ensure file and directory names are relatively portable": http://www.boost.org/more/lib_guide.htm#Directory_structure.
Beman might be able to clarify whether ISO 9660/Level 2 requirements in particular were one of the motivating factors back then or not, but currently those are the primary driving force for getting Boost codebase to conform to these rules: We want to be able to put a Boost distribution on a CD in the unpacked form, and for that CD to be readable on the maximum number of platforms.
In addition to ISO 9660, the classic MAC OS, VMS, and various IBM legacy OS's were considerations.
Thanks for the clarification.
The classic MAC OS is less of a consideration today, and VMS also falls in that category. The legacy IBM systems are still important in some quarters, but we have never had any requests for Boost interoperability on those systems that I'm aware of.
That pretty much leaves ISO 9660 as the main consideration. I'm under the impression that Joliet extensions are now widely available, although I've not done a systematic survey.
On major modern platforms, they are -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660#Operating_system_support. -- Aleksey Gurtovoy MetaCommunications Engineering