[Seqan-dev] C++11 features

[Hannes Hauswedell <hauswedell@mi.fu-berlin.de>]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to ask what the state of C++11 features in SeqAn is. The 
homepage mentions C++98, but in the medium term something like SeqAn 
would obviously benefit significantly from the new features.
And considiering that the Debian stable computers at the institute 
already support many features relevant to SeqAn, wide-spread support 
doesn't seem to be too far off.

Is there some sort of timeline or migration plan? Is there e.g. a macro 
that I could enclose code with that requires C++11 features?
This would permit adding new features and new code that already works 
with C++11 without having to bump the general requirement of the 
library. Ultimately the transition would be smoother, because not all 
existing code would have to migrated at once and new library features 
could already build on new C++ features.

The resaon I am asking is that I am currently working on 
Blast-statistics and Blast-IO for the library. All basic features are of 
course C++98, but some stuff simply isn't viable without C++11 -- or at 
least it isn't viable to do, when C++11 support will come sooner or 
later anyway. One such example is the feature in Blast-IO to have the 
programmer specifiy the amount (and type) of output columns in tabuler 
format. I have implemented this through Variadic Templates, which can be 
done with easily readable and reusable code -- without Variadic 
Templates on the other hand one would have to define n functions for 1 
to n parameters or use some obscure form of linked or nested templates...

Thanks,
Hannes