[vtk-developers] [vtkusers] Can we drop Visual Studio 6 support?

[Scott, W Alan]

I'm confused.
Customers would use the pre-compiled binary, wouldn't they?
Anyone that wants to compile ParaView is almost by definition a developer.

Just my own opinion - there is also the issue of cost in dollars and manpower.  If I had my way, we would be spending our limited resources cleaning up ParaView for the 3.6 release, working on multi-thread/ multi-core support, informatics, etc.  If someone does want VS 6.0 support (or any other support for a 10 year old compiler), maybe either they should pay for it or do it themselves?

I would vote to get rid of any compilers that are no longer supported.

Alan

-----Original Message-----
From: vtk-developers-bounces at vtk.org [mailto:vtk-developers-bounces at vtk.org] On Behalf Of Bill Lorensen
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 1:16 PM
To: Pebay, Philippe P
Cc: VTK Developers; VTK Users; Thompson, David C; Berk Geveci
Subject: Re: [vtk-developers] [vtkusers] Can we drop Visual Studio 6 support?

I understand your view as a developer. But, this is hard to justify to a customer.

Bill

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Pebay, Philippe P <pppebay at sandia.gov> wrote:
> I think there is a more fundamental reason why we should drop VS 6.0 
> support. Being 10 years old, this compiler lacks C++ features which developers may want to (and do) use. As a result, we have to write more complicated or less efficient code. This is not good.
>
> P
> --
> Philippe Pébay
> Sandia National Laboratories
>
> ________________________________________
> From: vtk-developers-bounces at vtk.org [vtk-developers-bounces at vtk.org] 
> On Behalf Of Bill Lorensen [bill.lorensen at gmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 11:35 AM
> To: Thompson, David C
> Cc: VTK Developers; VTK Users; Berk Geveci
> Subject: Re: [vtk-developers] [vtkusers] Can we drop Visual Studio 6 support?
>
> With ITK, if we have a VS6 or Borland or mingw or cygwin or VS7 or SUN 
> CC or 64 bit ICC or ... problem, we ask someone that has the compiler 
> to investigate a fix. Some errors are hard to fix without access to a 
> compiler.
>
> If you are still having a problem,  I have a VS6 compiler and can try 
> to track it down for you.
>
> Bill
>
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 2:19 PM, David Thompson <dcthomp at sandia.gov> wrote:
>>> What sort of maintenance issues are you having?
>> This type:
>> http://public.kitware.com/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/Common/vtkUnicodeString
>> .cxx?view=log There are *many* more examples (perhaps not all as 
>> humorously narrated), but the general problem is that the dashboard 
>> machines are the only way for many developers to test whether 
>> something will work with MSVC6. It can be quite irritating to check 
>> in something that should fix a compile problem and have to wait 1-2 
>> hours before seeing the result.
>>
>>> I think the real issue is what compilers do the VTK installed base 
>>> use? You may have customers that are using 3rd party 
>>> drivers/libraries that are VS6. Actually, there is no way to know who the customers are.
>> It would be nice to assume that customers who continue to develop 
>> with VTK read at least the digest, but I agree that some may note and 
>> it could be some time before we hear from them. I still think it is a 
>> good idea to drop VC6 not because it's irritating to debug build 
>> problems but because it can lead to obfuscated code as people rewrite 
>> bits here and there to accommodate old syntax and broken STL implementations.
>>
>>        David
>>
>>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Berk Geveci <berk.geveci at kitware.com> wrote:
>>> > Hi folks,
>>> >
>>> > We are thinking of dropping support for Visual Studio 6. It is 
>>> > causing annoying maintenance issues since no one in the developer 
>>> > team uses it and since VS 6 supports only a subset of modern C++ 
>>> > features. Are there any objects? If yes, I would like to know why.
>>> >
>>> > Best,
>>> > -berk
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>>
>>
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