[mapguide-internals] Future VS compiler

[Trevor Wekel]

Continuing with VS10 support will buy us about three years based on Microsoft Product Lifecycles http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/?sort=PN&alpha=Visual+Studio.  If I am reading the table correctly, VS2010 will reach end of mainstream support in July 2015.

Having a different compiler for MapGuide Open Source and a different compiler for AIMS will make it more difficult to develop verticals which work on both - especially .Net verticals.

I expect most of our .Net development community is using Visual Studio 2010.  Asking them to use an open source tool for .Net development  Eclipse/Mono(?) could be problematic at best.

Having the open source community and Autodesk on the same version of Visual Studio is also advantageous from a "shared effort" perspective.  As a community, we could do a better job at contributing to FDO and MapGuide.  If we are on different compilers, contributions will be more difficult to manage.

Visual Studio Pro 2010 without MSDN (C5E-00521) is approximately $600.

Yes.  $600 sucks a bit.  Asking an entire community to change their development environment is probably worse.

Regards,
Trevor



-----Original Message-----
From: mapguide-internals-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:mapguide-internals-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Walt Welton-Lair
Sent: May 22, 2012 10:06 PM
To: MapGuide Internals Mail List
Subject: RE: [mapguide-internals] Future VS compiler

Option 3 - we support both VS10 / VS11?

MapGuide currently has solution / project files for both VS9 and VS10.  I don't see why we can't continue that with VS11.

I agree it's a bit of a pain to maintain multiple sets of project files, but it might be the best option.

Walt

________________________________________
From: mapguide-internals-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mapguide-internals-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] on behalf of Jackie Ng [jumpinjackie at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 11:57 PM
To: mapguide-internals at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [mapguide-internals] Future VS compiler

Hi All,

For those who don't know, the next version of Visual Studio will no longer offer an express SKU for desktop application development in C#, VB.net and
C++. The only express SKU available will be to only develop their
apple-bastardised Metro apps.

http://www.winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/developer/microsoft-details-visual-studio-11-product-lineup-143139

Also the Windows SDK for the next version of Windows will no longer include the VC compiler toolchain and runtime libraries

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/hh852363.aspx

Anyone who has worked with Autodesk technologies knows that nearly everything revolves around AutoCAD/DWG and its vertical products and that AutoCAD breaks binary compatibility every 3 releases due to moving to the next MSVC compiler. I assume previous MapGuide RFCs from Autodesk to upgrade VS were driven by the need to have integration/compatibility with the latest version of AutoCAD Map.

This has ramifications for MapGuide and FDO as open source projects given that MSVC is the "official" compiler used for windows builds. I can just see that there will be a future RFC from Autodesk to move to VS11 and that's going to leave us (the OS community) in a bind. Unless we're going to metro-ize MapGuide/FDO (yeah right!) there will be no free future MSVC compiler to compile MapGuide/FDO on windows (let's not even talk development/debugging, just compiling/linking).

Moving to VS11 will raise the entry barrier for contributing to this project to the tune of whatever price MS will be charging for the VS11 professional SKU, and I am concerned and disturbed that an open source project like MapGuide/FDO will soon require non-free tools to contribute/develop in the future if the past is any indication.

So what options do we have? I see 2 options:

 1. Move towards an alternate compiler toolchain for Windows. First thought was MinGW, but my knowledge of the capabilities and reliability of MinGW and other alternatives on Windows is very limited. This would be the ideologically correct choice. Free software should not require non-free tools to build it. Also we may indirectly improve the Linux build quality by adopting MinGW seeing as it is basically the windows version of GCC. We already include full sources of all required thirdparty libraries anyway, so no external incompatibilities there as we can patch internal thirdparty sources if required.

 2. We stay on VS2010 as the official windows compiler indefinitely for the rest of the foreseeable future.

Also this is more a question directed at the non-Autodesk developers/users.
Autodesk can use whatever compiler they want for the commerical versions of MapGuide/FDO as far as I'm concerned. The question for us is should we have to follow them in lock-step for the Open Source releases?

Thoughts? It's not an immediate problem now, but will be in probably 2 years time.

Consider this email a pre-emptive -1 from me on any future RFC motion to upgrade VS from 2010.

- Jackie

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