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

Sat Apr 18 22:37:39 EDT 2009

David Cole's suggestion is the best one
 "My vote would be to say "VTK 5.4 supports back to Visual Studio 6."
-- but for CVS VTK and moving forward, please, please, please, use at
least Visual Studio 8 or 9. Let's drop 6, 7 and 7.1 support and
prepare for Visual Studio 10..."

In some of these posts I see that you are actually disabling some
tests - this is a sure sign the the compiler is past its use by date.

Seriously, you cannot afford to keep supporting such an old,
non-compliant and non-supported compiler. make VTK 5.4 the last branch
to support it. Also please look at other compilers with a small user
base and decide if these are also no longer supported.

Kitware is really generous regarding the number of compilers that they
actually support and test. This is one fact that we must not forget.
So if they need to drop VC6 support it is Ok by me.
I want to see VTK/ParaView/ITK/CMake evolve and get better and better.
Compilers evolve, this is why we are up to VS2008, gcc 3.4 etc instead
of remaining on VC6 and gcc 2.95.
So must Kitware.

My 2c worth.

Andrew

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 9:03 AM, David Thompson <dcthomp at sandia.gov> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> No, we should remove MSVC6 support because
> 1. it requires significant effort to keep it compiling VTK and ParaView
> cleanly including
>  - obfuscated code required to handle missing or broken features that
>    is hard to read and maintain,
>  - developer time learning, remembering, and exercising the list
>    of language features are unsupported or broken and all the hacks
>    to get around them;
> 2. it requires significant effort to keep the tests passing (there have
> been other instances besides the one I pointed out -- that's just the
> one I know of where no fix was eventually discovered);
> 3. Microsoft no longer supports it; and
> 4. all of the other good reasons that people have been pointing out on
> this thread.
>
> I don't want to be rude, but I want to make sure I get my point across;
> so, let me turn the question around. Besides the idea that some
> nebulously-sized group of developers (who are supporting other
> developers who build "products") might one day want to use a new version
> of VTK instead of one of the many versions that already support MSVC6,
> what reason is there to keep it?
>
>        David
>
>
>> 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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-- 
___________________________________________
Andrew J. P. Maclean
Centre for Autonomous Systems
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