A previously reported issue in Boost.Test, which the bug tracking system indicates as fixed, is still present in the 1.41.0 release. The issue I am speaking of is entitled "Boost:Test pointer error with g++ 64-bit on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard", discussed here: https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/3432 It looks to me like one of two things happened here. Either the bug was fixed on a branch but the branch was never merged into the release, or a merge conflict overwrote the change before it was ever released. In 1.38.0 and 1.39.0 the method in question looked like this: void clear() { while( !m_test_units.empty() ) { test_unit_store::value_type const& tu = *m_test_units.begin(); // the delete will erase this element from map if( test_id_2_unit_type( tu.second->p_id ) == tut_suite ) delete (test_suite const*)tu.second; else delete (test_case const*)tu.second; } } The ticket claims to have fixed the bug like so: void clear() { while( !m_test_units.empty() ) { test_unit_store::value_type const& tu = *m_test_units.begin(); // the delete will erase this element from map if( test_id_2_unit_type( tu.second->p_id ) == tut_suite ) { test_suite const* p = (test_suite const*)tu.second; delete p; } else { test_case const* p = (test_case const*)tu.second; delete p; } } } But in 1.40.0 and 1.41.0 the method looks like this: void clear() { while( !m_test_units.empty() ) { test_unit_store::value_type const& tu = *m_test_units.begin(); // the delete will erase this element from map if( ut_detail::test_id_2_unit_type( tu.second->p_id ) == tut_suite ) delete static_cast<test_suite const*>(tu.second); else delete static_cast<test_case const*>(tu.second); } } Perhaps whoever switched the C-style cast to static_cast removed the local pointer variable and reintroduced the bug? In any case, the bug needs to be re-fixed, in the next release, and I would suggest adding a comment so that a future maintainer doesn't eliminate the apparently pointless local pointer variable, like so: void clear() { while( !m_test_units.empty() ) { test_unit_store::value_type const& tu = *m_test_units.begin(); // the delete will erase this element from map // Important: The pointer MUST be copied to local // storage in order to avoid the issue described in // https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/3432 if( ut_detail::test_id_2_unit_type( tu.second->p_id ) == tut_suite ) { test_suite const* p = static_cast<test_suite const*>(tu.second); delete p; } else { test_case const* p = static_cast<test_case const*>(tu.second); delete p; } } }