Visual Studio 6 support deprecated
Posted by kimmov on October 8, 2008
Few months ago I wrote about supported compilers for WinMerge. And said we’ll deprecate VC6 as supported compiler. Since then there weren’t VC6 specific patches. Until couple of weeks ago somebody submitted patches to fix compiling with VC6.
Those posted patches showed very well why deprecating VC6 is the right thing. Marcel previously fixed our namespace imports and some other code cleanups. To get VC6 work we would have to revert these changes. No way I’d do that.
Previously I had stated that I can consider VC6 fixes if they don’t affect other code. Apparently that left room for some people to think we can make code uglier or add some hacks to get VC6 working again. So finally I stated that I simply won’t apply any VC6 specific patches anymore. No point in submitting such patches anymore, they won’t be applied. This is the final decision.
I know this upsets some people. And I know it can cause problems for some who for some reason want to continue using VC6. Unfortunately my only advice is you need to update your compiler. Or of course you can create your own fork of WinMerge and maintain VC6 compiling fixes in that fork. Just don’t expect we’ll merge such patches to our codebase.
Our challenge with WinMerge development is to make WinMerge more modern application. GUI is a bit oldish-looking. We lack many features people expect from modern editors etc. We must use our time with these things, not thingking how to support 10-years old compiler.
