The sad reality in a lot of industries is that we still have to support Windows XP for the foreseeable future. Though, I understand the desire to drop support for it. Believe me, everyone would be more than happy to just require Windows 7 as default and be done with it. However, it is hard to convince costumers to make the switch when there is only risk and no tangible benefit attached to it. In addition to this we do have the problem that we control complex (and expensive) hardware that consists of components that don’t have drivers for Windows 7 because the manufacturer discontinued them. For these people the end of support from Microsoft isn’t really an argument since the computers are not connected to the Internet and continue to work fine, not to mention that you can still buy extended support from Microsoft. The huge outcry from the C++ community when Microsoft wanted to drop support for XP in Visual Studio should be a clear indicator that a lot of people livelihoods still depend on it. Unfortunately since then the install base hasn’t really shrunken too much. So even Visual C++ 2015 will continue to support it. So, as long as a Visual C++ version supported by Boost can build for Windows XP and there isn’t a significant cost attached to it, Boost should also continue to support Windows XP.