On 06/12/2018 15:00, Ted Mielczarek wrote:
Hello,
In light of the fact that we've switched to clang-cl for our Windows builds[1],
we are planning to drop support for compiling Firefox with MSVC in the near
future[2]. Our estimate is that this will happen sometime in Q1. Supporting
more than one compiler is a maintenance burden and we've already seen
developers spend considerable time getting their patches that work with
clang-cl to build with MSVC. We are currently blocked by the fact that our
aarch64-windows builds are still using MSVC and we are waiting on upstream
clang-cl work to switch those builds to clang-cl. Once that takes place we no
longer have a compelling reason to continue supporting MSVC.
While I sympathize with the concern that "supporting more than one
compiler is a maintenance burden", this still leaves me feeling a little
uneasy. Ensuring that our code builds successfully with multiple
compilers is a useful way to keep us from becoming dependent on quirks
of a particular tool, and different compilers may provide different
(valid, useful) diagnostics that we should not simply ignore.
Our C/C++ code should (IMO) be standard and portable enough to build
with any modern, mainstream C++ compiler; writing code for a clang
monoculture feels wrong, a bit like building websites for a Blink
monoculture...
JK
To preempt the question--when this happens we intend to make MSVC error in configure, and
not just move MSVC to Tier 3 "patches welcome" status. Our reasoning is that
Tier 3 configurations still create work: developers spend time building in those
configurations, and lack of CI coverage means that when they inevitably break they waste
time trying to fix things. Bugs get filed, and other developers waste time trying to help
or reviewing patches to fix things. Explicitly unsupporting MSVC is the best way for us
to convey the fact that developers should not be using it and we will not accept patches
to fix issues that only affect MSVC.
If you have specific reasons for continuing to use MSVC please let us know. If
there are deficiencies in clang-cl compared to MSVC we should get them filed
and fixed.
Thanks,
-Ted
1. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1443590
2. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1512504
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