[Development] Platform / compiler support

[Thiago Macieira]

On Monday, 7 de November de 2011 15:31:27 João Abecasis wrote:
> To bootstrap the discussion I started a wiki page  with a short list of
> suggested supported compilers and platforms for Qt 5:
> 
>     http://wiki.qt-project.org/Supported_Platforms
> 
> At the bare minimum, I think we should strive to support these compilers:
> 
>     - GCC 4.2 and up
>     - MSVC 2008 and later
>     - Clang (trunk)

The list I had on IRC was similar to yours above, but it called for MSVC 2005. 
And the reason why was to try and get 90% to 99% of the current users of Qt. 
But I wasn't calling for supporting them, it was just the beginning of the 
discussion.

For compilers we should test and use in our farm, I'd recommend MSVC 2008 and 
GCC 4.4+. The compilers we recommend people use would be MSVC 2010 and GCC 
4.6.

Which of those combinations is the reference platform is up for discussion.

> It'd be nice to have a list of reference platforms and even better if such
> platforms had maintainers who'd provide testing results, help fix issues
> and generally ensure the platforms are in a working state. Supporting a
> platform may also have implications on the release process. Anyway, all of
> that is a bigger discussion.

Yes. I'm trying to work with the Intel C++ Compiler. The last update to 12.0 
worked fine, but something went very wrong with 12.1.

> For the time being, I'm interested in the most basic level of support:
> ensuring the code compiles, keeping language and compiler feature #ifdef's
> at a maintainable (minimum) level, while still allowing developers to make
> the most of the language, compilers and standard libraries.

So what are the features we're looking for?

And what are we going to do with this list of compilers? Is it when someone 
wants to use a feature X of the compiler, we check if the minimum set supports 
it and, if it does, the feature can be used without #ifdef?

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center
     Intel Sweden AB - Registration Number: 556189-6027
     Knarrarnäsgatan 15, 164 40 Kista, Stockholm, Sweden
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