Re: [boost] [Release 1.34] Supported Compilers

From: Joaquin M Lopez Munoz (joaquin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-01-31 04:45:27

Reece Dunn <msclrhd <at> hotmail.com> writes:

> 
> Loïc Joly wrote:
> >Thomas Witt a écrit :
> >
> > >>vc6
> >
> >I know that this compiler, however old, still has a wide usage in the
> >industry. For instance, my previous work place (a 130000 employees
> >company) used it almost exclusively, and most of its partners did so. In
> >my new workplace, we switched 1/2 months ago, but still need to support it.
> 
> I agree that there are still a lot of companies that are still using VC6, 
> mostly because of the effort that would be involved migrating to VC7 or 
> VC7.1. However, Microsoft dropped regular updates over a year ago and have 
> now dropped *all* support for this compiler.
> 

Well, MS has a commercial interest in promoting its
newest IDEs, but the sad reality is that VC6 is still in wide
use today. I think the following (ongoing) poll in CodeProject
gives much interesting info:

Poll: Which IDE are you using for Visual C++ development?
http://www.codeproject.com/script/survey/detail.asp?survey=537

Current results show that **39%** of respondents still cling
to VC6 rather than 7.x or 8.0. Many of them do so out
of necessity, because they can't assume porting some project
to a newest IDE --and, curiously enough, some like VC6 IDE
better !!

So, we are not talking about a dead compiler or a couple of
die-hard users. My proposal is that vc6 is marked deprecated
but some care is taken not to break things gratuitously --in
particular, foundation libs like config, test and core
components as for instance shared_ptr. On the other hand,
it is perfectly reasonable to assume that new libs won't
support vc6, and that existing libs will add features not
available to vc6 users.

Retaining some sort of support for older compilers involves
some work, but it is not such a gigantic effort IMHO, and
the aforementioned poll shows there's still a potential
vc6 users target to care about.

Joaquín M López Muñoz
Telefónica, Investigación y Desarrollo