Jeff Garland wrote:
On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 11:00:36 -0700, Jonathan Turkanis wrote
Perhaps after I restore some of the VC6 workarounds and get the core of the library working, you can help me add support for the adapters. Thanks for offering to help!
I really think we should stop wasting time on VC6 -- in particular, for new libraries. I'd rather see both of you spend time extending your libraries, writing new novel ones, or mentoring new library authors. I can't even begin to measure the amount of time I've spent on support for VC6 over the last 4 years -- I'm pretty certain more than all other compilers combined -- and I don't think I'm alone. If we stop supporting maybe it will coax the slow adopters into some upgrades as developers complain that they can't use the latest and greatest boost libraries without vc7.x. Anyway, I think it's time to just say no to VC6 support.
I'm very sympathetic to this point of view. When I stopped trying to support VC6 it felt like a great weight had been lifted off my back ;-) For some of my recent work, supporting VC6 is not even a remote possibility. In fact, in some ways VC7.1 has started to play the role that VC6 used to play: the old, broken compiler that ICEs at the slightest provocation. But I also want Iostreams to be as useful as possible, and I know there are still a lot of people stuck using VC6. So it's tempting to try to get the core of the library working again on that platform. Jonathan