I haven't spoken to anyone about the decision (as I'm currently on an island in the med) but to me the quick +1s are likely a result of this being a fairly straightforward decision. The factors that went into my thinking were (1) prioritizing growing platforms rather than shrinking platforms (i.e. thinking long term rather than shirt term) and (2) earning our customers' trust. Claiming support for a platform when we can't realistically deliver it would lose us trust. I'd prefer to over deliver and under promise when it come to windows 7 for this reason.
Now on the flip side one thing I would see as valuable is to try and get windows builds working with clang. This could be beneficial in the sense that it would be easy to maintain for mxnet devs and allow us to use modern cpp on older windows machines without using vs 2013(which I consider a non-starter with our codebase). You have peaked my curiousity though Sheng. How many win7 users does MXNet have relative to macos/Linux? On Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 8:51 AM Sheng Zha <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Yuan, > > No problem. This is an issue that's worth having a clear definition, so > there's nothing wrong about your proposal, and thanks for bringing this up. > > I'm more concerned about the seemingly unanimous votes on dropping support > on a platform without seeing the supporting evidence that it's the right > thing. It is as if everyone who participated in the vote are already on the > same page, and somehow I'm the only one that's not. But the only argument I > hear so far is that it's technically not straightforward to continue the > support, which, coming from Amazon folks, certainly doesn't sound > customer-obsessed. > > -sz > > On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 11:37 PM Lin Yuan <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi Sheng, > > > > Thanks for raising this concern. The problem now is that we cannot even > > build MXNet on Windows 7 because the build process requires MS VS 2015 w/ > > update 3 which is incompatible on Windows 7. This leaves many Windows 7 > > related open issues on github without any timely response. In my opinion, > > having no response to users' request is probably even worse than letting > > them know the limitation of OS support. > > > > To minimize the impact to current Windows 7 users, we can provide PyPi > > package for Windows 7 in this release but defer the bug fix and feature > > enhancement to later Windows OS version. Based on users' feedbacks, we > can > > then officially discontinue the Windows 7 support in the next MXNet > > release. > > > > I will appreciate your comments. > > > > Lin > > > > > > > > On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 1:37 PM Sheng Zha <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Are any of the votes based on any measure of user impact, if we indeed > > > decide not to fix the current problems? > > > > > > -sz > > > > > > On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 1:29 PM Hagay Lupesko <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > > > +1 (non-binding) > > > > Thanks for raising this Lin! > > > > Are you suggesting to do it as part of MXNet 1.3? > > > > > > > > On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 9:14 AM Srivastava, Rohit Kumar < > > > > [email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > +1 > > > > > > > > > > On 8/29/18, 8:39 AM, "sandeep krishnamurthy" < > > > > [email protected]> > > > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > +1 Thanks for bringing this up. > > > > > > > > > > On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 6:38 AM Marco de Abreu > > > > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > +1 > > > > > > > > > > > > On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 1:08 PM kellen sunderland < > > > > > > [email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > +1 (non-binding) > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 1:18 AM Anirudh Acharya < > > > > > [email protected]> > > > > > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > +1 for discontinuing. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Tue, Aug 28, 2018 at 4:11 PM Naveen Swamy < > > > > [email protected] > > > > > > > > > > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > +1 to stop supporting Win7 > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Tue, Aug 28, 2018 at 3:54 PM Lin Yuan < > > > > [email protected]> > > > > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Dear Community, > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Currently, our MXNet installation guide for Windows > > does > > > > not > > > > > work > > > > > > for > > > > > > > > > > Windows 7. e.g. Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 is not > > > > > supported on > > > > > > > > Windows > > > > > > > > > 7 > > > > > > > > > > < > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/support/vs2015/received-error-specified-program-requires-newer-version-windows/ > > > > > > > > > > >. > > > > > > > > > > In addition, MSFT ended “Mainstream” support for > > Windows > > > 7 > > > > > in 2015 > > > > > > ( > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet > > > > > > > > > > ). > > > > > > > > > > Therefore, it is not possible for developers to build > > > MXNet > > > > > and > > > > > > > verify > > > > > > > > > the > > > > > > > > > > fix on Windows 7 platform. Given that there have been > > > > several > > > > > > issues > > > > > > > > > about > > > > > > > > > > MXNet error on Windows 7 (issue#9271 > > > > > > > > > > < > https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/issues/9271 > > >, > > > > > issue > > > > > > #8921 > > > > > > > > > > < > https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/issues/8921 > > >, > > > > > issue > > > > > > > #11163 > > > > > > > > > > < > > https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/issues/11163 > > > >), > > > > > it will > > > > > > > > even > > > > > > > > > > add > > > > > > > > > > more burden on developers in the future if we were to > > > > > continue > > > > > > > > supporting > > > > > > > > > > Windows 7. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I therefore would like to propose that we discontinue > > the > > > > > support > > > > > > of > > > > > > > > > MXNet > > > > > > > > > > on Windows 7 in the next release. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Specifically, this means the following required > > actions: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 1) state the discontinuation of Windows 7 support in > > the > > > > > release > > > > > > note > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 2) update the MXNet webpage if Windows version is > > > > mentioned. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 3) update the open Github issues related to Windows 7 > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Please share your thoughts about this proposal and/or > > > > > suggest if > > > > > > > there > > > > > > > > is > > > > > > > > > > any other missing action item from the above. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Best Regards, > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Lin > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > Sandeep Krishnamurthy > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
