OS X Lion C++11, Boost and other questions

Question

I am an experienced Mac/iOS developer, but I initially started to program in C++. I haven't touched C++ for years, and now, it's time to do so, because I want to have multi platform support for a new kind of file type I am trying to create.

C++ has evolved over the years, to what I find is a very bloated mess of 3rd party libraries and an effort by the C++ standards committee to control the evolution of the language. Hence, my questions.

I want to have as much advanced tools at my disposal as possible, and at the same time conform to standards as possible. My main development platform is OS X Lion, and I have access to a fedora 16 installation. I want to target Lion and above, Windows XP and above, and the latest Linux kernels, so backwards compatibility is not an issue here.

One choice is to install the Boost libraries to my machine, but to what I have experienced a long time ago it is a very painful process, with compile-time errors and quirks that have to be done to OS X. I don't know if that experience will be the same if I try that now. The other choice is to stick with TR1 which Lion currently offers. However, TR1 is not a standard as I understand, it is a de facto popular implementation of things that were scheduled to be done in C++11. That way I lose a lot of advanced features that Boost offers.

With these two options in hand, what is the recommended way to have advanced C++ features at your disposal and conform to standards as much as possible? If it's Boost, is it recommended to compile Boost as static libraries in order to avoid installing Boost on end-user machines?

What is the current support of Xcode 4.3 for C++11 features?

I would appreciate any comments on the above questions as well as any other thoughts on the matter. I am trying to get in sync with the current version and features of C++ and I begin to realize that this may not be so easy as I initially thought.

Thanks.

Answer 1

First of all, there are two very distinct parts in Boost:

• those which are header-only
• those which require compiled libraries

If you stick to header-only, it will definitely be much easier. Note that some libraries, like Asio, have two compilation modes (header-only and library). A number of useful libraries, however, such a boost::regex, do require a compiled library.

Second, C++11 support is moving fast. GCC 4.7 and the upcoming Clang 3.1 support all major features of the Standard, except from atomics (discussions are still ongoing on the best implementation strategies), so on Linux and Mac, things are great... however Visual Studio is lagging behind, and Microsoft is not really interested in moving fast, so on Windows support is minimal still (and advertised supported features are based on older versions of the Standard and not 100% compatible with the last version). It does not mean you cannot compile for Windows, merely that you should use Mingw or equivalent and thus forgo interaction with existing Windows DLLs.

Based on those two observations, I would recommend:

• try to avoid C++11 for now if you want to interact with Windows DLL, otherwise I would recommend Clang (for its integration in XCode)
• try to avoid Boost libraries and stick to the header-only parts (there is still much goodness)
• if you want libraries, you can use DLL as long as you distribute them alongside the executable or use a package system or whatever, but it does present a greater difficulty (for the installation) than just static linking.

Answer 2

Note I'm not a Mac developer but I'd prefer Boost. Many C++11 standards are taken from it and you can expect more Boost features will be ported to C++ standards.

And as a Qt enthusiast: take a look at QtCore. It's very powerful and cross-platform.