Supporting MSVC2010 in ktexteditor framework

[Mirko Boehm]

Hi!

> On 05 Nov 2014, at 09:02, Kevin Ottens <ervin at kde.org> wrote:
> 
>> I propose to bump the required compiler versions across the board to
>> compilers that fully 100% implement C++11. It is 2014 and C++14 is
>> finalised. And we are a Free Software project and none of our compilers
>> have any problems with that.
> 
> In the case of VC there's no such compiler yet. Even VS2013 is not 100% 
> compliant.

There will always be small differences. The big picture is important. And the big picture IMO is that restricting ourselves in 2015 to the feature set of a compiler released in 2009 and is two major revisions of the language behind is bonkers. It also deters more users and contributors than we can ever gain with it (that is my similarly unprovable claim :-) ). My reasoning is that KDE’s frameworks need to be showcases of excellent pieces of software to attract users and contributors and this limitation plays against that.

>> In more general terms, the benefits we can gain from fully utilising our
>> excellent programming language outweigh by far the potential fringe utility
>> of gaining 0.5% users of non-free outdated compilers.
> 
> I strongly disagree here because of the above. There's quite a few potential 
> users on non-free platforms (some I already talked to in fact). It happens 
> that one of those platforms is Windows where VC is the most pervasive 
> compiler.
> 
> Now, my experience when visiting customers is that quite a few are still stuck 
> with VS2010 but the majority seems to be actively using VS2012 now. Early on I 
> was wondering if those VS2010 users could be using our stuff, I'm more and 
> more thinking with their profile it won't be the case.

“Potential users” are a void claim without any data to back this up, and we do not have any data AFAIK. In todays numbers, these potential users (who aren’t users yet) are not a significant group. I would say that a reasonable threshold to consider such a limitation would be something like 20% or even 10% of existing contributors. From what I can tell, those Windows developers that contribute use more modern VC compilers than 2010. 

If need be, ask the contributors for their preference. Poll for it. Do something about it. I do not think that this limitation in language features has the support of the contributors. 

Cheers, 

Mirko.
-- 
Mirko Boehm | mirko at kde.org | KDE e.V.
FSFE Fellow, FSFE Team Germany
Qt Certified Specialist

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