On 04.05.23 08:52, Maurice Kalinowski via Development wrote: [...] > This is the situation we experience in multiple industries still, with an > increasing pressure from multiple angles to get those finally supporting Qt > 6. Hence, things are getting better for C++17 _now_. [...]
This actually sounds like an argument for _earlier_ adoption. If Qt, as an important component in the ecosystem, slows the pace, then OEMs feel even less pressure to update their toolchains, making the problem worse for the industry at large. The main problem I have with this line of reasoning is that I think it's the LTS's job to serve those customers that end up in these situations. So it's not like those customer's can't use Qt, they just can't use the latest features. But they can't, anyway, because they have such an old toolchain. I wonder how much of this is customer' requests and how much of it our desire to move customers off Qt 5? One way to skin this particular cat would be to keep non-core modules compatible with the last LTS to give users access to newer features in those modules without having to update tool-chains. Realistically, most of the bang we get from a C++20 requirement is in QtBase and, possibly, QtDeclarative. IIUC, we do this for some part of qtdeclarative and for qtwebengine already, and, while it's occasionally annoying, it lets us eat our own dog-food, too. Speaking with the tongue of the Qt OSS project, I fail to see how all this isn't SEP. Users of such OEM boards have several ways to solve the problem: - pressure the OEM to support a six-year-old C++ standard - pay someone (TQtC, KDAB) to build a newer toolchain on top of the old one, or do in-house - vote with your feet and switch to an OEM that has a better customer service Playing the devil's advocate: What's Qt got to do with this? Thanks, Marc PS: doesn't chromium now require C++20, too? How are we going to deal with another 5 years¹ of C++17 if a critical 3rd-party component, too huge for us to maintain ourselves, uses its clang-tooling foo to modernize every aspect of its code base w.r.t. C++20 idioms? ¹ Qt 6.8 release² in Mar '25 + 3yr support = Mar '28. ² dev qwebengine maintains compat with the last LTS -- Marc Mutz <marc.m...@qt.io> Principal Software Engineer The Qt Company Erich-Thilo-Str. 10 12489 Berlin, Germany www.qt.io Geschäftsführer: Mika Pälsi, Juha Varelius, Jouni Lintunen Sitz der Gesellschaft: Berlin, Registergericht: Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, HRB 144331 B -- Development mailing list Development@qt-project.org https://lists.qt-project.org/listinfo/development