Sebastian Redl wrote:
Jens Seidel wrote:
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 09:14:25AM +0400, Vladimir Prus wrote:
1. Applications using 1.35.0 need not be changed at all.
This means the API, the Application Program Interface, does not change (no changes in source code required).
This ought to be doable without too much trouble for minor releases.
2. If application link to 1.35.0 as dynamic library, then switching them to use 1.35.1 should not break anything.
This means the ABI, the Application Binary Interface, does not change.
Since most of Boost's libraries are header-only, that's meaningless for them. Mostly, anyway. ABI compatibility is to be maintained by the compiled libraries foremost, they would have to worry about this the most. It can be done with a bit of understanding of the issues and some discipline. The question is, is it worth it? Any application that uses a precompiled Boost component probably uses other Boost components, too. As such, the likelihood is high that upgrading Boost means recompiling the application.
Why? If there's no interesting change in that other Boost component in a 1.35.1, I don't really need to recompile. - Volodya