[Development] Supported platforms for Qt 5.8

[Thiago Macieira]

On quarta-feira, 24 de fevereiro de 2016 21:53:06 PST Blasche Alexander wrote:
> > Basically it means we are stuck with Visual Studio 2012 c++ featureset
> > for Windows Embedded Compact 2013.
> 
> I spoke to the Microsoft guys on Embedded World today. 

(too bad I couldn't go)

> They confirmed that it is 2012 and there are no plans to update this. 

This would support the position that we can't touch our compiler requirements 
unless we want to change our platform support promises.

> In fact that went as far
> as saying that the relevant development team behind WEC2013 has been
> abandoned to the point that the essential support is barely possible.

While this would indicate that people should stay away from WEC2013 and we 
should really be dropping it, to the point of not even finishing the 
experimental support.

Of course, this is anecdotal information and I wouldn't make business 
decisions like that.

> > If we want to support newer C++ with Qt 5.8 we would need to drop the
> > complete platform.
> 
> And this is the main reason behind this push.

See Marc's reply to my list of enabled features. I didn't find anything there 
that would be compelling enough to warrant dropping a platform we've only 
barely added anyway.

> The answer is no. The principle feature set is working. There are some gaps
> related to device debugging but those gaps are due to non-open protocols.
> The term "Experimental" is a rather bad choice of word.
> 
> The commitment towards WEC2013 in Qt 5.6 is what really matters due to its
> LTS character. By the time 5.6 support runs out Qt 5.8 support has been
> ancient history.
> 
> In summary Qt does not gain anything from pushing WEC2013 to 5.8:
> 
> - Potential Qt Customers are not stranded due to 5.6
> - WEC2013 in 5.8 doesn't really enable more projects
> - MS says it is dead and licenses are hard to come by
> - the currently visible project pipeline is rather dry on this platform
> 
> *But* our C++11 offering is yet longer chained.

So why are we bothering with VS2012 for Qt 5.7 then? Why wait until 5.8?

Let's drop it now.

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center