[Development] Let's please drop MSVC 2013 for 5.10

[Marc Mutz]

On 2017-06-23 17:52, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> On Friday, 23 June 2017 04:43:02 PDT Alex Blasche wrote:
>> Him
>> 
>> I'd like to update and conclude this discussion.
>> 
>> After crunching the numbers, we have a 30% download ratio for MSVC2013
>> (compared to total Win downloads including 5.9.0). That's a very
>> significant amount. Theerfore we cannot drop MSVC2013. At the same 
>> time the
>> confirmation was given that 5.11 will no longer support MSVC2013. Once 
>> dev
>> has been branched off for Qt 5.10 development, feel free to make use 
>> of
>> this decision in the new (5.11) dev branch.
> 
> Thanks for the numbers, Alex. It's still too high a use for us to drop 
> it.

I don't care much, as QStringView does compile with MSVC2013 already, 
and QStringViewLiteral is private API, *but*:

The above argument makes no sense to me. What value does quoting 
download numbers for 5.9, an LTS, have, to argue about dropping the 
compiler from 5.10. Ever since we provide LTSs (yes, once), we drop 
compilers in the version _after_ the LTS, which is kind of the natural 
point to drop stuff.

This whole thing reminds me of the MSVC 2012 discussion for 5.7. In the 
end, we dropped 2012 for 5.7, and with it the whole WinCE platform. Now, 
18 months later, 2013 is in exactly the same position as 2012 was back 
then, except dropping 2013 does not entail dropping a whole MS 
ecosystem, too.

Do you have the download stats of 5.6 for MSVC 2012 from 18 months ago?

I'd not be surprised if 2012 had 30% share back then, too. Those users 
are served by 5.6 LTS for another 18 months as much as 2013 users will 
be served by 5.9 LTS for another *three years*.

Thanks,
Marc