[llvm-dev] [RFC] migrating past C++11

[via llvm-dev]

If we claim to support a Thing, then we should accept patches to fix when the Thing breaks.  Whether a bot verifies that the Thing works, is not really relevant; "support" means "we say this works and will fix it when it breaks."

A bot is a service to the community in that it can tell you more-or-less promptly when you have broken a Thing. It is not the only way to determine that you have broken a Thing.  However, it does tell you that you have broken a Thing that somebody thinks is worth putting up a bot to verify that it stays not-broken.
Given the number of times lately that newcomers have had difficulty getting started (because some Thing we claim works, actually doesn't), I think it would be valuable to the ongoing health of the project to have bots verifying the particular Thing that is the minimum supported compiler versions.  This doesn't mean I'm volunteering to provide that resource; neither does it mean I refuse to provide that resource. I am pointing out that it would be valuable generally, and as part of this longer-term goal to specify minimum compiler versions, it would be a Good Thing™ to be able to tell promptly when we've accidentally broken that, so that newcomers don't beat their head against a wall and go away disgusted with an open-source project that lies to them about supported configurations.

--paulr

From: Mehdi AMINI [mailto:joker.eph at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2019 6:19 PM
To: Robinson, Paul
Cc: James Y Knight; Krzysztof Parzyszek; llvm-dev
Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] [RFC] migrating past C++11



On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 9:37 AM via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
Please include MSVC in the table. While the picture on Windows is way less complicated than for *nix, it's still a platform and toolchain that matter to a number of us in the community.

Separately, there was talk of needing to have bots that specifically use the oldest supported toolchains, otherwise we can't genuinely promise that they are really supported (don't want feature dependencies creeping in by accident).

IMHO the difference between "supported" and having a bot validating the configuration is whether we accept patches to fix issues on this particular platform.

Otherwise, I believe historically it has been up to the users that care about a platform to provide CI ressources for it. Do we have an alternative plan?

--
Mehdi

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