RFC: Move to C++14

[Christopher James Halse Rogers]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 1:18 PM, Daniel van Vugt 
<daniel.van.vugt at canonical.com> wrote:
> Also worth noting, it takes less effort to support trusty:
>   https://code.launchpad.net/~vanvugt/mir/revive-trusty/+merge/249789
> than it does to start using C++14 features:
>   
> https://code.launchpad.net/~afrantzis/mir/introduce-c++14/+merge/249988

That's obviously somewhat unfair. The effort required to *support* 
C++14 features is a 3-line, +1/-1 diff.

> On 18/02/15 09:39, Daniel van Vugt wrote:
>> I think this is a bad idea.
>> 
>> Supporting trusty with the latest Mir is presently easy, as 
>> demonstrated:
>> https://code.launchpad.net/~vanvugt/mir/revive-trusty/+merge/249789
>> 
>> Using newer language specs I think is contrary to engineering 
>> maturity.
>> Because it means we knowingly and needlessly reduce the number of
>> distros Mir can support. And we also make the learning curve for 
>> people
>> even steeper (fewer C++ developers know the new language features).
>> 
>> Overall this will lead to reduced adoption by users and reduced
>> participation by developers. We need to be careful and draw the line
>> somewhere... stop upgrading to the latest C++ every time one comes 
>> along.

Philosophical differences :).

I'm not convinced that this will result in reduced participation by 
developers; a fair contingent of developers will be *more* interested 
in a project using the most modern tools available.

I think we should be aggressively upgrading to better tools whenever 
it's easy. Obviously I'd quite like to do a bunch of Mir in Rust, but 
that's not easy. C++14 is a better tool that's extremely easy to use in 
Mir.