On December 1, 2012 9:34:41 AM Eric Niebler <eric@boostpro.com> wrote:
So here's the scoop from Herb. There are two separate things: the rolling releases (like the just-released Update 1 which added XP support to VS'12), and the CTP releases (like the one that just that added variadic templates to the compiler). The former are officially supported, go-live products; the latter are not. There is, and should be, *no expectation* that the features delivered in the CTP releases will ever make it into the officially supported updates.
On other words, we should operate under the assumption that there will be no improvements in C++11 compliance of any officially supported Microsoft compiler until the next major release of Visual Studio.
I worded that very carefully. I believe it is 100% accurate. I will be directing Herb's attention to this thread so that he can comment if I got anything wrong.
What that means for Boost is up for us to decide. But given the above, I think it would be wise for us to add support for the CTP releases to Boost.Config using _MSC_FULL_VER so that we don't have to wait until VS.Next to start taking advantage of variadic templates (for example).
I disagree. If CTP is not an indication of a feature support in the official compiler, why should we support it? Adding workarounds for CTP bugs is probably reasonable but not new features. OTOH the rolloing releases give new features the official status, and we can be sure they won't disappear.