[vtkusers] Can we drop Visual Studio 6 support?

[Bill Lorensen]

So, in all of VTK, there is one test that is disabled for Visual
Studio 6. And I guess there is no other way to provide this
functionality. Therefore, we should remove VS6 as a compiler.

Bill

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 3:27 PM, David Thompson <dcthomp at sandia.gov> wrote:
>> First look: the continuous vs6 platform with this ctest script:
>> http://www.cdash.org/CDash/viewNotes.php?buildid=314820 which has
>> PARALLEL ON is passing all tests. When you say this works on all other
>> platforms, how did verify that?
> In order to have a clean dashboard for the recent VTK release, the
> buildmaster at Kitware added this to Parallel/Testing/Cxx/CMakeLists.txt
>
>  IF(NOT CMAKE_GENERATOR MATCHES "Visual Studio 6")
>    SET(MyTests ${MyTests}
>      TestMultiBlockExodusWrite.cxx
>    )
>  ENDIF(NOT CMAKE_GENERATOR MATCHES "Visual Studio 6")
>
> That was rev 1.82 on 3/6/2009 so I believe dashboards just before that
> should show the test failing.
>
>        David
>
>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 3:06 PM, David Thompson <dcthomp at sandia.gov> wrote:
>> >> 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.
>> >
>> > Be careful, I might take you up on that. :-) For instance, we have
>> > turned off ParallelCxxTests TestMultiBlockExodusWrite on builds using
>> > MSVC6 because, while it works on all other platforms and runs cleanly
>> > under valgrind on Linux and Mac OS X, garbage gets written to the test
>> > file when compiled with MSVC6.
>> >
>> >        David
>> >
>> >
>> >> 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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