On January 3, 2013 9:31:21 PM ecyrbe <ecyrbe@gmail.com> wrote:
For boost maintainers, i know that it's a really hard job to maintain a library. But when releasing a dynamic library for boost you should keep API and ABI backward compatibility if you announce that you support linux. I know a lot of the maintainers only care for windows or mac and have a point of view that the application developper is in charge of his software dependancy and build tool chain... but it's not true in linux domain. please keep it in mind.
I don't see why API and ABI backward compatibility is any more significant on Linux. Each distribution release typically sticks to particular versions of basic libraries, including Boost, and compiles the rest of packages against that set of libraries. But surely, if a compile time switch is introduced, it should only affect the header part of the library so that the compiled part is compatible with either configuration.