[LLVMdev] [RFC] Raising minimum required Visual Studio version to 2013 for trunk

[Yaron Keren]

I'll second this, for example Reanto, VC 2012 had lots of problems with
your last patch but only one problem with VC 2013 which could be easily
fixed (array initialization). VC C++ conformance is rapidly advancing and
VC 2012 is not up to it.

Yaron



2014-08-22 12:49 GMT+03:00 Renato Golin <renato.golin at linaro.org>:

> On 22 August 2014 00:48, Aaron Ballman <aaron at aaronballman.com> wrote:
> > We told the community less than nine months ago (when we made the
> > C++11 switch) that we would support the last two versions of MSVC. Now
> > we're saying "only the latest version, because it has nice things."
>
> I don't see it this way. We need a compiler on all platforms that can
> conform to the same level of the standards. In most platforms, that's
> GCC and Clang, on Windows, that's also MSVC.
>
> The problem here is that Linux and Mac developers will test their code
> on multiple combinations of { Linux, Mac } x { x86, x86_64, ARM,
> AArch64 } and it'll work perfectly, until it reaches Windows and
> breaks because the compiler can't handle it.
>
> Solving this problem is not trivial, and relying on buildbots to tell
> us what's wrong promotes a culture of trial and error that makes it
> impossible to control the source at any level (ex reverting bugged
> commits, or applying them back again).
>
>
> > That would make sense if those nice things were something we couldn't
> > live without, or if there was a long delay for a new release of MSVC.
> > Neither of those things seem to be the case, so I'm not certain why we
> > would change our developer policy on three day's notice.
>
>  We're finding the hard way that it could have been a lot better if
> MSVC 2012 were actually a modern compiler to begin with. We haven't
> changed the minimum requirement anywhere else, and still, it's MSVC
> that is breaking up. That's a clear sign that MSVC 2012 is *not*
> compatible (feature-wise) with all our other minimum requirements.
>
> IIRC, we "accepted" MSVC 2012 as the minimum requirement due to
> pressure, not because we thought it was a good idea and we said it
> would have to move faster than the others because of the sheer lack of
> functionality. Now it's past 3.5 release and 3.6 will probably come
> out in 2015, the sooner we start the move to a more modern MSVC, the
> better it'll be when we actually release 3.6.
>
> I think Chandler's idea to break it now and see how it goes, by
> changing only the make files, is a good one. At least we'll make all
> the problems visible, and will be able to tackle them one by one,
> instead of waiting for some people to chime in, people that haven't
> been involved yet?
>
> I also believe that we need to answer Alex's questions before
> anything. We can't just guess, as we're talking here of a possible
> massive incompatibility problem on millions of software out there (and
> the games we play!!), so that's a critical issue! :)
>
> But other than that, stakeholders should have been doing their
> homework and trying 2013 ever since 9 months ago. It's most definitely
> not 3 days ago.
>
> cheers,
> --renato
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