Re: Dropping C++03 support (again)

From: Vinnie Falco (vinnie.falco_at_[hidden])
Date: 2023-02-17 18:22:49

On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 10:11 AM Jeff Garland <azswdude_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> C++23 will blow your mind then -- no significant language features were added.

Junk was added to the stdlib though.

> I'll take that as a personal jab :)

Not a jab I was talking about Beman and I didn't want to bring up the
reason for his departure.

> ...the missing part of the analysis is how many developers care about
> c++11 *only* at this point. gcc 11 which is a couple years old defaults
> to c++17

The metric I use, is what percentage of potential users will be lost
if C+11 is dropped.

> Survey's indicate that most developers are already on 14 or above.
>  In 3 years I suspect it will be a tiny tiny fraction of the community.

Well, "most" could be 51%. Even if if 80% of my users are on 14 or
above, I would not drop support for 11. But yes if in 3 years I could
drop 11 and only 5% of potential users would be lost then I would
probably drop it. Unfortunately we are not quite there yet.

Reference:
<https://isocpp.org/files/papers/CppDevSurvey-2022-summary.pdf>

> hdoc requires a commercial license for commercial users many
> enterprises will no longer be able to build without paying.  In my
> 2 minute review it also doesn't support /** style doc comments
> which seems like a regression. I'm all for modern docs, but less
> clear to me this is the path.

That's all being worked on including the license (CPPA is taking care
of that) so when it is delivered I'm pretty sure it will make everyone
happy. This replaces Doxygen. But if people want to keep using
Doxygen, that also works.

> I retract my suggestion.  Instead let's litigate deprecation on an ongoing basis instead.

Yes that does sound entirely reasonable and sensible :)

Thanks