C++11 feature checking

Question

How do I check for presence of individual C++0x/C++11 language features? I know Clang has a nice system for this. What about GCC, Visual Studio or Boost? I guess one way to do it is to detect the compiler version and relate that to the features introduced in that version. But that is cumbersome. Has someone already done that?

Answer 1

boost config comes with a script to check for some but not all C++11 features.

It generates a config-file with macros for each feature.

Answer 2

Your build-tool may be able to help with this.

CMake has the try_compile command which allows you to test whether a code sample will compile and set a variable based on the result of compilation.

At the moment I've just been using the more commonly supported features such as auto typing.

You can often use Boost to replace the missing library features, and this may be the best option for a few year while compilers and libraries are updated and bugs fixed.

The C++11 feature compatibility list for GCC is here: http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx0x.html

Note the warning:

Important: GCC's support for C++11 is still experimental. Some features were implemented based on early proposals, and no attempt will be made to maintain backward compatibility when they are updated to match the final C++11 standard.