Why 7 and not Vista?
Vista never had much traction. Smart users upgraded computers
On 8 May 2015 at 4:43, Rob Stewart wrote: preloaded
with Vista; I did so on a laptop. As another example, my company bypassed Vista. All its desktops run Windows 7.
Also Vista is highly unusual in that it had no corresponding Windows Server edition. There was a straight jump from an XP base (2003) to a 7 base (2008). I can see us remaining on Windows 7 support for a very long time. Which is no bad thing, Windows 7 hammers down all the nails I currently care about on Windows.
What I'm suggesting is that notice is given that XP support is now down to each library maintainer's good wishes, and libraries are coming which won't support XP, and will never support XP.
I think XP should either be properly supported or it shouldn't be supported period.
XP isn't supported now since there's apparently no testing for it. The change is to be clear that the minimum supported Windows OS is 7. That doesn't mean that maintainers or Boost.Config should make changes to purposely sabotage using (parts of) Boost on XP.
Exactly. If those who really care about XP support could donate some XP testing resources to Boost it would go a long way towards keeping XP support around. After all maintainers can't know if they have broken XP support unintentionally otherwise. If they don't donate those resources, it's obvious they don't actually care that much after all. Even still, there are libraries coming which can't support XP. I especially see any Boost.Thread v5 not supporting XP, not ever. That's still a while out, but the bullet should be bit sooner rather than later so notice should be given. Once Windows Server 2003 passes EOL I think it's time to give notice. It's not like older versions of Boost are going anywhere. People needing XP support can remain on an older Boost. Niall -- ned Productions Limited Consulting http://www.nedproductions.biz/ http://ie.linkedin.com/in/nialldouglas/