Hi Volodya,

From: boost-bounces@lists.boost.org [mailto:boost-bounces@lists.boost.org] On Behalf Of Vladimir Prus

[snip]

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Borland: __WIN32__ _WIN32 Digital Mars: _WIN32 GCC (MinG/W and Cygwin with -mno-cygwin): __MINGW32__ WIN32 _WIN32 __WIN32 __WIN32__ Metrowerks: _WIN32 Microsoft: _WIN32

It seems that _WIN32 is defined by all of them....

Yep, _WIN32 is enough from the hard-wired switches to be sure about the Win32 platform, at least for what have done all the time. I forgot Watcom, which defines _WIN32 __WINDOWS_386__ :-) but they have still a long way to compile boost.org...

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The macro WIN32 is meant to be a user-definable option how to enforce a WIN32 code if a compiler does not define _WIN32.

Ok. When is it needed, BTW?

Well, you have caught me. Actually, I did not need to use it yet. I have it in my configuration just to be flexible waiting for such code or compiler... AFAIK, MSVS from some interesting reasons keeps to generate new wizards-made projects and makefiles with the macro WIN32, dunno why. They may have some old sources with both #ifdef _WIN32 #endif and #ifdef WIN32 #endif and it does not pay off to them to correct it, I do not know. I use -DWIN32 as well in my makefiles and PLATFORM_WIN32 = _WIN32 || WIN32 in headers even if _WIN32 alone should be always enough.

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And if you like, it is possible to do something like this to be complete:

BOOST_WIN32 : _WIN32 || WIN32 BOOST_WIN64 : _WIN64| WIN64 BOOST_WINDOWS : BOOST_WIN32 || BOOST_WIN64

Yea, I think this makes sense. Though _WIN64 is not used anywhere in config yet.

It will start shortly, as soon as someone with a fresh new x86-64 from AMD starts to play with the boost::filesystem :-) Today one should be careful with BOOST_WINDOWS and check the 64-bit compatibility, if the macro will mark general Windows platform. Ferda

- Volodya