Freeing yourself from obsoletion

in #utopian-io7 years ago (edited)

Gridcoin is a decentralized crypto currency which rewards BOINC computations. It aims to be energy efficient while simultaneously providing concrete benefits to scientific research, such as weather observations, curing diseases and assisting in astrophysical discoveries.

No more Qt4

With Gridcoin v3.7.0.0 we changed the way we build Windows releases and were finally able to drop Qt4 support. Seeing as Qt4 got its support yanked by Nokia in 2015 it was about time that we made the final switch on Windows as well.

I am an avid advocate for code removal, especially when that code is obsolete. It increases readability and makes the overall code easier to understand, and locating specific pieces becomes less of an issue. With the Qt4 requirement out of the Window we could start axing some of the legacy compatibility quirks scattered throughout the UI tree. Some calls could be removed completely while others could be moved the the UI definition files. It may not look like much but it has been a long standing annoyance. Each preprocessor condition removed is a kitten not slain.

Going down the good hill

If we have a look at the trend in the Gridcoin source tree we can see that we are continuing our quest for code removal and the codebase keeps getting smaller and smaller.

  • Master branch: 75100
  • Staging branch: 74369
  • Development branch: 73475

Each release takes us one step closer to cleanliness. Small steps perhaps, but small steps in the right direction nonetheless. When v3.7.0.0 is released and block version 9 kicks in we can start cleaning out the old block version 8 rules which will take the lines down even further. Expect v3.7.1.0 to be even slimmer.



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Thank you for the contribution. It has been approved.

I will look into the styling issue.

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nice post

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A British big shot once said: "All the great things are simple".

I tend to agree with that quote :-)

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Correction: Expect v3.7.2.0 to be even slimmer.
Thanks guys, I really appreciate the work and it shows!

Code efficiency is progress

Great to hear about Qt4 going away. Anytime timeline yet for 3.7.0.0 release date?

To all of our developers, keep up the great work!!!

I think we have what we need to release now. We have been testing it on testnet for a very long time, and some of the testers have recently taken it into production without any issues. We recently removed the auto upgrade and had to adapt to boost-1.66.0 as neither OSX nor Arch users could compile.

I expect us to release this week (as in from tomorrow, Monday) unless any new issues show up.

Wonderful to hear!!!

All for the qt4 drop, hopefully soon I can compile on my new Arch linux machine which doesn't like the current qt source!

It should build in Arch now. @tahvok reported on IRC that it works.

Awesome! I used to program on a MUD and there was useless code on top of useless code on top of useless code. It was a nightmare.