which compilers do we want to support with KDE 4 ?

[Jaison Lee]

IMO dropping 3.x completely is crazy. At the very least there is a
large body of Slackware users out there and Slackware likely won't see
gcc 4 for some time. (It's funny that way.) A lot of people still
don't trust 4.x, and feel somewhat strongly about it. I know 3.3 is
working fine right now so I see no reason to drop it just to be
dificult. If 3.2 has become broken in an unfixable way then that is as
early as I feel should be dropped.

The reality as I see it is that if we expect KDE4 to be cross-platform
we're going to have to deal with all sorts of compilers. Sooner or
later someone is probably going to try and build KDE with OpenWatcom.
We should get used to things now.


On 1/21/06, Nicolas Goutte <nicolasg at snafu.de> wrote:
> On Saturday 21 January 2006 12:58, Guillaume Laurent wrote:
> > On Saturday 21 January 2006 11:58, Nicolas Goutte wrote:
> > > On Saturday 21 January 2006 11:32, Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > > > Do we want to support gcc < 3.4 for KDE 4 ?
> > >
> > > The higher you put the limit the lesser developers you will get. (And it
> > > is not that we have plenty of developers everywhere in KDE.)
> >
>
> > It's not that obvious.  Upgrading one's compiler is a one-shot thing which
> > most distributions handle rather well.
>
> Sure, I can only compare. Switching from CVS to SVN was also supposed to be
> very easy, however KDE lost many language translations... so how many
> translations (at least of documentation) are you ready to lose by forcing
> gcc4?
>
> Sure if you have a flat-rated high-band Internet connection, you can update
> all you want. Sure if you are professional developer, you will get all
> updates that you want too.
>
> (I do not care about my case. I can't compile KDE4 now, so it makes little
> difference if gcc 3.3.1 is supported or not. If not, there is surely plenty
> for me to do outside C++. (Just too bad for KBabel.))
>
> > On the other hand, supporting "old"
> > compilers means a lot of wasted developer time, and in a continuous way.
>
> Well, if you lose developers, you lose their time *entirely*.
>
> > Also, by the time KDE4 comes out, gcc < 3.4 will be *much* less used than
> > it is today.
>
> Just a comment: as far as known, KDE is suppose to compile on non-gcc
> compilers too, starting with MSVC for Windows. Also there is a wish to
> compile on Linux with icc. Are those all gcc4 (or at least gcc 3,4) compliant
> too?
>
> Have a nice day!
>
>
>
>