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c++.stlsoft - A little confused about VC 6 support

reply "christopher diggins" <cdiggins videotron.ca> writes:
Why all of the energy on supporting VC 6? Is it really that common of a tool 
in production environments? It appears to me to me to be a huge waste of 
time and energy. This concerns me, because I do not want to support VC 6 in 
YARD.

-- 
Christopher Diggins
Object Oriented Template Library (OOTL)
http://www.ootl.org
Apr 01 2005
next sibling parent reply "Pablo Aguilar" <paguilarg hotmail.com> writes:
Well, there's some of us who are stuck with it... for several possible 
reasons:

1) The SDK we're using to develop only works with VC6. In my case, the 
company I work for, develops add-ins for AutoCAD, which up to version 2002 
is still developed with VC6. I assume the same applies to many other big 
shot apps, one or two versions old.
2) Maybe the cost of upgrading isn't justified for some companies
3) Others which I might not have thought of right now..

Having mostly only developed with it, I never noticed it to be much of an 
inconvenience, other than not being able to use the "latest & greatest" 
boost libraries. But after watching Matthew battle with it yesterday, I 
understand your point.

The above are my reasons, I guess you'll have to wait and see what other 
people have to say...


Pablo Aguilar

"christopher diggins" <cdiggins videotron.ca> wrote in message 
news:d2jivb$o72$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Why all of the energy on supporting VC 6? Is it really that common of a 
 tool in production environments? It appears to me to me to be a huge waste 
 of time and energy. This concerns me, because I do not want to support VC 
 6 in YARD.

 -- 
 Christopher Diggins
 Object Oriented Template Library (OOTL)
 http://www.ootl.org
Apr 01 2005
parent "Matthew" <admin stlsoft.dot.dot.dot.dot.org> writes:
"Pablo Aguilar" <paguilarg hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:d2kbmj$1hmj$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Well, there's some of us who are stuck with it... for several possible reasons:

 1) The SDK we're using to develop only works with VC6. In my case, the company
I work for, develops add-ins for 
 AutoCAD, which up to version 2002 is still developed with VC6. I assume the
same applies to many other big shot apps, 
 one or two versions old.
 2) Maybe the cost of upgrading isn't justified for some companies


The above two represent a non-trivial amount of real-world scenarios.

Remember two things:

    - Up until a few months ago - when MS stopped support - many companies were
still widely using NT4. My guess is that 
many still will for some time
    - Microsoft are *never* going to:
        (a) admit that many people do not need to upgrade things (I still use
Office 97, and it does everything I want 
at 5 times the speed of Office 200-and-whatever!!)
        (b) acknowledge, or at least publicise, how many people use software
that's officially demode but practically 
entirely sufficient.


 3) Others which I might not have thought of right now..

 Having mostly only developed with it, I never noticed it to be much of an
inconvenience, other than not being able to 
 use the "latest & greatest" boost libraries. But after watching Matthew battle
with it yesterday, I understand your 
 point.


After a while, you get a gut feeling for what's going to be tractable, and
what's not. I "knew" the right_view() 
implementation was do-able, and so finding the solution was tolerable. When
your gut's telling you there's no VC6 
solution - a la much of the RangeLib stuff - it's very disheartening, and you
always berate yourself afterwards for not 
having listened to your guts and given up earlier. (Ah, the travails of the
Yorkshire Terrier ... )



Frankly, I think the best service MS could do for the C++ programming community
would be to spend the very small amount 
of time and effort into making VC6 support partial template specialisation in
the form of an SP6. But of course that'd 
be commercially unsound. Don't ya just love capitalism! ;)

(Actually, people'd I'd some pay real hard cash for that!!)
Apr 01 2005
prev sibling parent "Matthew" <admin stlsoft.dot.dot.dot.dot.org> writes:
Three reasons for me, all of which I consider 'important':

1. There are plenty of organisations out there that still use VC6, including
some of my clients. Since I want to use 
STLSoft when I'm working for them - saves both parties a *lot* of time and
effort - I want VC6 covered.

2. I refuse to lose the skills (or the plug-ins) I have in Visual Studio 98,
and either go to Eclipse (which I've heard 
is really slow) or VS.NET (which I _know_ is really slow: 5 minutes to load,
40MB mem used in quiescent state!!!!!! 
puh-leeeze), especially since I can get by in VS 98 without ever touching the
mouse. (FWIW: I also use GVIM on Windows, 
and use Vi/GVIM exclusively on Linux.) Any IDDE that makes me take my hands off
the keyboard would slow me down and piss 
me off, and I simply will not go through that. Because Intel 6/7/8 all bolt
nicely into VS 98, I am able to switch to a 
'modern' compiler whenever I need to. The problem with Intel is that it doesn't
build browse info - always has trouble 
with the .sbr files - which also takes away a well-used tool from my armoury.
One of the aims of Arturius was (and still 
is!) to be able to plug any compiler into any IDDE, at which point I'll be able
to use, say, VC++ 7.1/8 in VS 98, and 
I'll never have to 'upgrade' my IDDE.

3. C++ is getting way too complex. I find the discipline of maintaining
compatibility with older compilers is quite 
useful in steering me away from (too many of) the excessess of the modern era.

4. Although Walter'll tell you that he thinks I'm a complete nutter, I find it
very useful to be able to compile code 
through older compilers. Although you might not grok it unless you've done a
lot of it, it's the case that some older 
compilers catch what some newer compilers miss: e.g. something that GCC 2.95
will choke might help cure a problem that 
VC 7.1 has. The overall picture is more complete when as many compilers as poss
are involved.

Having said all that, there're several parts of the libraries that are only
compatible with 
partial-template-specialising compilers. Hence, regarding YARD, there's no need
for you to worry about having to work 
with non-modern compilers. It's just nice if it's possible and practicable. If
not, no worries.

Amusingly, I'm going *really* anachronistic with STLSoft 1.9, because I'm going
to try and support C compilation for the 
main headers and (some of) the function-only libraries. <G> (FYI: It's so I can
use certain STLSoft facilities for 
implementing Python and Ruby extensions, as well as a few other things,
including the likely C-code of Recls-2.)

Cheers

Matthew



"christopher diggins" <cdiggins videotron.ca> wrote in message
news:d2jivb$o72$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Why all of the energy on supporting VC 6? Is it really that common of a tool
in production environments? It appears to 
 me to me to be a huge waste of time and energy. This concerns me, because I do
not want to support VC 6 in YARD.

 -- 
 Christopher Diggins
 Object Oriented Template Library (OOTL)
 http://www.ootl.org
Apr 01 2005