Supported Compilers

We’ve endeavored to use only standards-compliant C++14 in Au, with the goal of making it work with any compiler that fully supports the C++14 standard (or any newer one). Of course, there’s no substitute for testing! So we also include certain platform/compiler combinations in our automated test suites, which we run on every commit.

Note

We’ll use “configuration” as a shorthand for “platform/compiler combination” for the rest of this doc.

Formally, we have three tiers of support.

1. Full Support. These configurations must be kept passing on every commit.
2. Best Effort Support. We measure whether these configurations are passing on every commit, and strive to keep them passing. However, if we cannot do so, we may let them break.
3. Assumed Support. These include all other C++14-compatible configurations which we do not measure explicitly.

Each tier has requirements that must be met for a configuration to be included in it. Any configuration that doesn’t meet the bar for any higher tier is in the “Assumed Support” tier.

Status changes

We expect most status changes will be user-led. Users who want a higher tier of support for their preferred configuration are welcome to file an issue, especially if they can provide some guidance as to how we can help it meet the requirements for that tier (that is, how to set up suitable GitHub workflows or bazel toolchains for it).

Some status changes may be out of our control. For example, if GitHub actions drops support for Windows Server 2019, we won’t be able to continue running GitHub workflows for MSVC x64 19.29. If that happened, we would have to move that configuration to the “Assumed Support” tier.

Tiers: Requirements and members

Now we’ll go into more detail about each tier. We’ll explain the requirements which a configuration must meet to join that tier, and we’ll list the configurations that are currently included.

Full support

To add a configuration to the Full Support tier, we must be able to add a hermetic toolchain to our bazel workspace. The motivation for this requirement is that we want any developer to be able to check out the repository, and have a tight iteration cycle with full local reproducibility for any CI errors.

Here are the configurations that have Full Support status.

Platform	Compiler	Status
Ubuntu	clang 11
Ubuntu	clang 14
Ubuntu	gcc 10

Best effort support

To add a configuration to the Best Effort tier, we must be able to set up an automated GitHub workflow job which runs tests on that configuration. This means that any developer will be able to iterate on these configurations, although some may be forced to push commits remotely and trigger CI jobs to do so.

Although we reserve the right to drop support for these configurations, we will strive to avoid doing so if at all possible. We expect to be able to succeed and keep these passing in perpetuity. Even in the unlikely event that any of these configurations break, we’ll continue to provide measurement badges, so that potential users with these configurations are forewarned.

Here are the configurations that have Best Effort Support status.

Platform	Compiler	Status
Windows Server 2019	MSVC 2019 x64
Windows Server 2022	MSVC 2022 x64