backwards compatibility/cross-compiler compatibility

[Benjamin Kosnik]

v-3 tracks the SGI STL. It's my opinion that this is wise, and that all
care should be made to not diverge widely from this distribution.

> How concerned are we about maintaining backwards compatibility (I don't mean
> for deprecated features in the standard, but stuff like "construct" and
> "destroy", which are left in for "backwards compatibility for HP STL").
> (Actually, that's a bad example because these "features" break our
> implementation namespace.)

... should be in backwards. See the directory naming conventions, linked
off of the contribute page on the website.

> Also, what is the classification of libstdc++?  Are we a library only for
> egcs (in which case we can use compiler-specific optimization techniques),

I suppose if someone wanted to port it to another compiler, that's up to
them. They've got the source, and it's GPL'd. My personal priorities are
egcs and standards conformance, which seemingly leaves more than enough
work to do. . .

-Benjamin