[cfe-dev] RFC: A proposal to move toward using C++11 features in LLVM & Clang / bounding support for old host compilers

[Kim Gräsman]

I thought I'd throw in my two Windows cents...

On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 2:31 PM, Benjamin Kramer <benny.kra at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> - Windows is special as people have to manage their own toolchain. However, we have aggressively dropped old MSVC versions in the past,
> I doubt dropping MSVC 2010 is a big problem as there's still 2012 and 2013 for people to pick from.

I guess the problem for me is _which_ MSVC to focus on. They release
updates regularly (seems to be a 3-6 month cycle), and Visual Studio
2012 as a whole is at Update 4 by now, I think.

I'm not sure what an update entails, but on the .NET side we've had
API breakage between updates. I don't know if the C++ folks release
major changes (e.g. changes to the compiler) at the same rate.

The "problem" with these incremental releases is that Visual Studio
insists that you update on every launch, so it's hard to know which
version you're really running locally unless you turn off automatic
updates. I haven't found a way to uninstall an update.

If the assumption is that the product gets progressively better, it
should be fine, but there's a risk that a sleight-of-hand click of an
Update button renders your machine LLVM/Clang-dev-incompatible.

FWIW,
- Kim