firebird on MSVC2015 [was: minutes of ESC call ...]

On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 06:45:47AM +0100, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 07:28:58PM +0100, David Ostrovsky wrote:
> > On Thu Mar 10 16:40:50 UTC 2016, Michael Meeks wrote:

> > >    + decision needed: (Norbert)
> > >        + effort to support VS 2015
> > >        + not eager to turn it off.
> > > AI:        => regret; disable for now for CI (Norbert)

> > (...) the FB devs rejected support for the new toolchain
> > (C++14/C++17) for the next 10 years (at least) because they need the
> > compatibility with WinXP (see the thread from their ML I mentioned
> > in my previous mail).

> I read that thread and I didn't see a rejection of compatibility with
> a new toolchain. I saw a requirement for compatibility with an old
> toolchain. If they intend (and do test it at least "for every
> release") to:

>  * be compatible with MSVC2013
>  * build their binaries with MSVC2013
>  * AND be compatible with MSVC${LAST_VERSION_WITHIN_A_REASONABLE_TIMEFRAME}

> then AFAICS we don't have a problem.

So, I got a straight answer from them:

1) There is an unofficial variant of Firebird 2.5 at
   https://github.com/dmitry-lipetsk/firebird/tree/B2_5_Release
   which compiles fine with MSVC2015, and which seem to be tested; the
   README.md says:

   Binaries, created from these sources, are used in load and stress
   tests of IBProvider (OLE DB Provider for Firebird and InterBase).

2) I quote:

> > Short version: will Firebird (2.5? 3? latest?) in general be kept
> > compatible with the latest major compilers (within a reasonable time
> > of their release) for each platform for the foreseeable future?

> Yes. Just don't expect it to happen immediately.

> v2.5 is officially built using VC2005 but also supports VC2008 and
> VC2010 (used by some our developers).
> v3.0 is officially built using VC2010 but also supports
> VC2012/2013.
> v4.0 will be officially built using VC2013.

> I don't want to promise anything for v2.5 which is likely to be
> discontinued in two years, but I see no reason why v3 and v4 cannot
> be compiled using VC2015 or whatever later. Obviously, it's not our
> top priority. We just need someone to setup VC2015 and give it a
> try.

So one way forward would be to switch to Firebird 3.0 (which is at RC2
level), anticipating MSVC2015 compatibility "soon" (and enable it on
Windows when the compatibility arrives); looks like if we make the
patches ourselves, they would gladly accepted them.

We could also use the above "unofficial" variant of Firebird 2.5, but
my personal taste would be towards the future (version 3) rather than
staying with 2.5.

My plan is to try to invest GSoC resources into the above. No veto?

-- 
Lionel