[tao-announce] Time to modernize ACE/TAO!

[Johnny Willemsen]

To all ACE/TAO users,

We are pleased to announce that ACE/TAO are getting modernized! The core
developer group has supported very old (and broken) compilers for a long
time, but it is now time to start modernizing ACE/TAO with the features
and capabilities of C++11!

The coming period the core developer group will make C++11 a mandatory
compiler feature for ACE 7.0.0 and TAO 3.0.0. This upcoming new major
release is almost 10 years after ACE 6.0.0 and TAO 2.0.0 which where
released December 14th 2010.

When you are using a C++11 capable compiler you should only notice that
ACE/TAO will use C++11 features and that we will provide new C++11 APIs
which will simplify your application code. There is no need to update
your ACE 6.5.x based code, just recompile it with upcoming ACE 7.0.0 and
TAO 3.0.0 and it should work. C++11 capable compilers are for example
Visual Studio 2015 and newer, gcc 4.8 and newer, and clang 5 and newer.

When you are using a C++ compiler which doesn't support C++11 you can
keep using the ACE 6.5.x and TAO 2.5.x releases. When there is enough
user sponsoring the core developer group will release new 6.5.x ACE/TAO
releases with user funded bug fixes and enhancements! For this a new
ace6tao2 branch is created in the ACE/TAO git repository (see
https://github.com/DOCGroup/ACE_TAO) which will be the development
branch for any new 6.5.x developments.

Best regards,

Johnny Willemsen