a) The document re:auto-link indicates that not all platforms support it. That leaves me wondering what happens when the macros are included in the library source code an its compiiled? Is there an error message. Does everything work with the same as w/o auto-linking macros?
The header auto_link.hpp has internal guards, so that it only emits the necessary #pragma if the compiler actually supports it, otherwise nothing happens except that the auto-link macros you defined will get #undef'ed. Even if these guards weren't present there will still be no errors, just a warning about an unrecognised #pragma.
b) I notice that Comeau doesn't show up in the test matrix. This made me wonder if the configuration for the comeau compiler has been updated to consider the auto-link idea. In fact, since Commeau is a "pre-compiler" its not even clear to me that can be fit in.
We've always had problems testing Commeau, in particular knowing what configuration to test: in the past we've tested it in strict mode - which seemed to be the most useful option - but then several perfectly good libraries were failing because Commeau in strict mode can't handle <windows.h>, so any library that wraps platform services would fail.
c) When I build with comeau. The auto-link macros seem to be undefined. This makes me wonder if the config files ro comeau need to be altered to take this into account.
What's undefined that should be? Are you sure that Commeau supports those #pragma's anyway?
d) The above makes me wonder if comeau config files have not been kept up. So my question is:
Have comeau config files been kept up with changes required to support auto-link. If so, why is not comeau appearing in the test matrix?
No one is running it, if no one is running it then it's config will not get updated, if you want to run the Commeau regression tests and keep it's config up to date then I'm sure it would be appreciated. John.