Joel de Guzman wrote:
A question for you Borland die-hards is what's up with the state of the compiler? Has it stagnated or are new developments going? I remember applying to be a Borland beta tester some years ago but it fell on deaf ears, and I never looked back again. It seems that they don't care. So why should we care? Don't get me wrong. I used to have a loyalty towards it. I learned my first Pascal program with their original compiler.
Borland seem to have been confused trying to support a new ISO conforming compiler with an EDG front-end (released as a preview) as a new product for new customers, and maintaining their old compiler with its GUI extensions and known problems for existing customers. It seems every time they came close to shipping a product, corporate strategy moved, everyone dropped ship and moved into the other direction again :?( A new compiler is finally promised before the end of the year, so hopefully in the next 4 weeks! This will be built on the BCB6 toolchain though, not the EDG preview. I am hoping there will be progress (not least because we have a large codebase that relies on those GUI extensions, that always proves too expensive to port) but suspect it will continue to be a burden on anyone supporting that compiler in their libraries for some time to come. The Borland field test process is a closely guarded secret so I have no idea what it actually takes to get on board. If you are still interested in testing (or any other regular Boosters for that matter) I will rattle a cage or two to see if Borland will invite you onto the next FT, whenever that is. They say Boost compatibility is an important issue for them, especially as we customers keep telling them it is a concern for us! Back on topic, TR1 is an important library, and I would really like my production compiler to come as close to supporting it as possible. I am equally fed up reading through boost source with a large number of workarounds to support it. I would be very happy with an alternate implementation (such as existing tuple) that did not pollute new code, was not entirely conforming, and continued to be supported by the Borland community - much as Spirit 1.6 remains for legacy support. I guess I am trying to push more work on John, who already has his hands full trying to play header tricks already! -- AlisdairM