> On Jun 14, 2018, at 9:38 AM, Jonathan Wakely <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 14 June 2018 at 14:31, John Spicer <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> 
> wrote:
> 
>> On Jun 14, 2018, at 9:22 AM, Jonathan Wakely <[email protected] 
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 14 June 2018 at 14:08, John Spicer <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> > On Jun 13, 2018, at 9:12 PM, Richard Smith <[email protected] 
>> > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> > 
>> > P0722R3 (wg21.link/p0722r3, just voted into the standard) does not specify 
>> > a feature test macro, but I think it would benefit from one. However, it's 
>> > not completely clear how we should arrange this: it needs both compiler 
>> > support and library support, and is unusable without both.
>> > 
>> > Should we add two feature test macros for it (one for compiler, one for 
>> > library)? Should we recommend that the library macro be defined only if 
>> > the language macro is defined, so that users need only check one, or 
>> > should we keep them separate, to allow the library functionality to be 
>> > discovered despite the language functionality being absent? (In the latter 
>> > case, a library could be built using an old compiler and a new library, 
>> > and provide functionality to clients that are built using a new compiler 
>> > and a new library.)
>> 
>> I think the normal case is that the compiler and library will be supplied 
>> together, so that only the language macro should be needed.
>> 
>> It's common for Clang and ICC to be used with Libstdc++, in which case we 
>> need both macros. The compiler might support the feature and define the 
>> macro, but unless a sufficiently-new version of Libstdc++ is used the 
>> library won't support it.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> In the case where you are using a library from somewhere else, and the 
>> library does not include the feature, I think the language feature would 
>> need to be disabled in the compiler (e.g., by a command-line option) and 
>> that would turn off the language macro.
>> 
>> That requires knowing a priori which version of the std::lib you're using 
>> and which features that version supports. That's one of the annoyances 
>> feature test macros are supposed to remove :-)
> 
> So, is the implementation supposed to test the library flag to decide how to 
> set its flag?
> 
> The compiler could set its macro, and the library conditionally define the 
> library functions and library macro only if the compiler macro is defined. 
> The user would check the library macro.
> 
> That does mean we'd have a compiler macro that users are never meant to use, 
> because it doesn't tell you anything useful in isolation.

That wouldn’t work if the user was using a compiler that didn’t have the 
feature but the library was built with one that did have the feature.

The user would have to test both the language flag *and* the library flag.

John.

> 
>  
> 
> The compatibility of a compiler and a library does not seem like it can, in 
> general, be solved by feature test macros.
> 
> As an example, an implementation can generate a call to the aligned operator 
> new without the <new> header ever being included, but it will fail to link if 
> the library doesn’t include the function.
> 
> I agree the general case can't be solved by feature test macros, but maybe 
> this one can.
> 

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