[vtkusers] Support of C++ Builder with VTK 5.10 and newer

[Sean McBride]

On Tue, 4 Sep 2012 22:29:29 +0000, James Johnston said:

>Thanks for the response - somehow your answer doesn't surprise me at all.
>:)  Possibly, I would have to check and see whether this would be something
>we could do and if this is the path we want to take.  What would it take to
>get such a server into the CDash system?
>http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VTK/Developers_Corner under "Creating a nightly
>dashboard submission" would seem to be a starting point?  What kind of
>conditions/requirements do you have for submission to that dashboard?  (Also
>a practical question would be the system requirements: how much RAM/CPU
>needed to build/test?)  Apologies if there was more information somewhere
>that I missed.

It's really quite easy to set one up.  Any reasonably recent machine will do.  My oldest dashboard is a Mac G5 circa 2004.  That wiki article is a decent starting point.

>I'd also be interested in whether anyone can comment on past C++ Builder
>support.  It's clear that it used to work and was probably tested regularly,
>but this must have stopped happening sometime in the past.  Does anyone know
>how long ago the compiler stopped being tested, and what the reason(s) might
>have been?  Was it just that the person/people running the build server
>stopped maintaining it and it kind of fell out of testing, or was there a
>more conscious decision to stop supporting it?

Dunno.

I've never heard of C++ Builder until now (just read the wikipedia article)... is its C++ support modern or half baked? :) You might try updating from XE2 to XE3, especially since you are seeing an ICE.

>Part of the reason I wonder
>is whether the nightly build server would be utilized much - would the
>community help maintain VTK to be sure that it compiles and tests reasonably
>cleanly on a newer C++ Builder version?

Yes.  When someone makes a change to VTK's code, it's also his job to watch the dashboards for things that break.  If some change makes compiler X fail, the error message is sometimes enough for anyone to fix it, other times the help of someone with access to compiler X (you) would be needed.  If you run a nightly dashboard, it's best that you make a habit of checking its status each morning.

PS: please keep the discussion on-list.

Cheers,

-- 
____________________________________________________________
Sean McBride, B. Eng                 sean at rogue-research.com
Rogue Research                        www.rogue-research.com 
Mac Software Developer              Montréal, Québec, Canada