Re: new concept checks and the 3.0 ABI

[Gabriel Dos Reis <Gabriel dot Dos-Reis at cmla dot ens-cachan dot fr>]

Theodore Papadopoulo <Theodore.Papadopoulo@sophia.inria.fr> writes:

| Honestly, I do not see the library can be freezed 
| althought I admit that it would be a very nice thing to do.
| Now, the next question is, can we do something to minimize the 
| effects as much as possible. Maybe, this is already done, I do not 
| know.

Even then, there are outstanding defects which still need to be
resolved, I cannot make any promise that the resolutions won't break
anything and I can hardly imagine users not wanting to see the fixes
in the next releases.

| Gabriel.Dos-Reis@cmla.ens-cachan.fr said:
| > Then it is, because libstdc++ developpers were never told that the
| > "C++ ABI" issue was about libstdc++ and not what has been implemented
| > as the "new C++ ABI" or "C++ ABI v3". 
| 
| Well, I seem to remember that there were such questions raised in the 
| lists (I do not remember which one) before. More particularly, if I 
| remember correctly when an update of SGI STL was made between two 
| MINOR releases and that broke some code.

That discussion was effectively about bringing in updated STL from SGI
in  a minor relase of 2.95.x (I think it was 2.95 => 2.95.2).

| So the question has been raised...

But in a completely different context, not what Joe is talking about.

I never propose to break binary compatibility in minor releases --
that would be pointless.  But the fact is that freezing libstdc++ ABI
in the current state either means a lie or stopping any development.

[...]

| > IOstreams are not even in their final shape.  We still need away to
| > have an implementation not built on top of stdio.h. 
| 
| It might be feasible to give to each of the library component a 
| rating about the likelihood of being changed in terms of ABI in the 
| future ?

Maybe.  But I don't have any idea of what that would mean...  Any
suggestion of scale?

-- Gaby