[prog.c++11] SObjectizer-5.5.16.1 with bug fixes and backport to GCC-4.8

The version 5.5.16.1 of SObjectizer core is released!

Although version 5.5.16.1 has only minor changes this release is very important for us due to the following reason. We have changed our attitude to compiler versions required for building and using SObjectizer.

Before release 5.5.16.1 the minimal version of GCC required was 4.9. Since there are a lot of developers who are forced to use older GCC versions (for example, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS has GCC 4.8 by default), it means they simply can't use SObjectizer out of the box.

We decided that it is not appropriate. SObjectizer is not an experimental project and it has never been. SObjectizer was created to help to develop real-world software and had always been used for that purposes. So it is not good that SObjectizer cannot be used with some three or two years old compilers. Especially if there exist some political or commercial reasons which prohibit compiler upgrade.

So we have backported SObjectizer to GCC 4.8 and decided to keep GCC 4.8 compatibility for the whole lifetime of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. It means that since v.5.5.16.1 and for all future versions of v.5.5 the minimal GCC version required for SObjectizer-5.5 will be GCC 4.8 until April 2019 (the last year of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS). Also It means that if we start v.5.6 in the near future it will also require GCC 4.8 as minimal compiler version.

As lifetime of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS ends we will switch to GCC 5.3 as minimal version. But it will happen only after 3 years from now :)

What about clang? Minimal clang version we are using for SObjectizer testing is 3.4.1. It works perfectly so we will probably stay with clang-3.4 or clang-3.5 for the same time as with GCC-4.8.

More information about SObjectizer and its capabilities can be found in this serie of presentations.

The v.5.5.16.1 can be downloaded from the corresponding [Files section] or can be checked out from [Subversion repository] and from [mirror on GitHub].

The Files section has the following archives:

• so-5.5.16.1 ([zip], [tar.gz], [tar.xz]) -- the source code of SObjectizer core (with samples sources and tests);
• so-5.5.16.1--bin-msvs2015-x86 ([zip]) -- the full source code with 32-bit binaries for Windows (compiled using MS Visual Studio 2015 Community Update2);
• so-5.5.16.1--bin-msvs2015-x86_amd64 ([zip]) -- the full source code with 64-bit binaries for Windows (compiled using MS Visual Studio 2015 Community Update2).

Please note that since v.5.5.10 there are no archives with Doxygen-generated docs and binaries created using MS Visual Studio 2013. Such kind of archives can be created and uploaded by request.