PSXE 2019 Update 2 - many deprecated OS and IDE Versions

[Johannes_Rieke]

Dear Intel team,

I read the release notes for PSXE 2019 update 2 and I was a more than a little bit puzzled by the information, what is deprecated with update 2. Other software vendors announce the support end for certain things long before and do this with major releases and not with a minor (bug fix) release. Maybe I missed this information.

Here a citation of the release note:

Changes in Intel® Parallel Studio XE 2019 Update 2:

• All tools updated to the latest version.
• Intel® Parallel Studio XE 2019 Update 2 includes functional and security updates. Users should update to the latest version.
• Support for the following operating systems is being deprecated:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux* 6
  • Ubuntu* LTS 14.04, 18.10
  • Fedora* 27, 28, 29
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server* 11
  • Debian* 8
  • Microsoft Windows* 7, Server 2012
  • macOS* 10.13
• Support for the following IDEs is being deprecated:
  • Microsoft Visual Studio* 2013, 2015
  • Xcode* 9.x
• Support for the Microsoft Visual Studio Shell* is being deprecated.

Especially VS 2015 support end is not in line with the tradition to support of the latest 2 versions of VS. VS 2019 is not released yet, isn't it? Not to mention that the VS 2017 integration seems not to be flawless...

What does it mean that VS Shell is not supported anymore? Does every user needs VS professional by now on? Or will you support VS Code?

Please, Intel team, give us a comment on this topic.

PS: We wait still for a bug fix list... (e.g. see thread: https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-visual-fortran-compiler-for-windows/topic/702188)

PPS: The Intel Fortran compiler release notes are still meaningsless: Intel® Fortran Compiler 19.0 Update 2 includes functional and security updates. Users should update to the latest version. (https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-visual-fortran-compiler-190-for-windows-release-notes-for-intel-parallel-studio-xe-2019) What should this information help?

[Rene_Blankenburg]

Totally agree with it!

[FortranFan]

An edit: given the feedback in Quotes 4, 6, 7, 8 below, a more accurate comment is I agree with PS and PPS in the original post.

[Before edit: the comment was "MeToo!  Agree totally with the original post."]

[Steve_Lionel]

The need for VS Shell is less nowadays due to the free availability of VS Community Edition and its liberal license terms. It would not astonish me if MS decided that they no longer wanted to offer the Shell in this form - even while I was at Intel it was clear that MS didn't care much about it. In addition to the Shell itself, Intel licenses some MSVC libraries and tools with a complicated arrangement that has always been a lot of effort on both sides.

Intel has traditionally followed Microsoft's lead on when old Windows versions are no longer supported; MS has already ended support for Windows 7 and Server 2012.

[Johannes_Rieke]

Hi Steve, thanks for your answer. The VS community edition is nice, but helps not if companies are too big or by other reasons are not qualified to use it legally. So, buying VS professional would then be necessary even for colleagues who work seldom with the Fortran compiler. A disadvantage for this kind of Intel customers compared to prior state.

Another reason not to depend on VS IDE only. As mentioned in other threads, Code::Blocks for Fortran is a superb, open source, platform independent alternative.

If Intel follows MS support end, then the early Windows 10 versions should not be supported either like Ubuntu 18.10. ;-)

[Devorah_H_Intel]

Visual Studio 2015 Shell: Please see this article on Deprecation and Removal of Microsoft* Visual Studio Shell* for detailed information. 

Visual Studio 2015 is still supported for all 19.0 Intel Fortran Compiler (part of the Parallel Studio XE 2019) releases. Deprecation means - support will be removed in the future major release. ( Note:VS 2019 preview is out already)

[Steve_Lionel]

Microsoft doesn't differentiate updates to a particular OS when it comes to official support.

The IDE is actually the least important part of this. Intel Fortran depends on third-party C libraries and tools (MSVC on Windows, gcc on Linux and MacOS.) Those have to come from somewhere....

As for Ubuntu, etc., that has no vendor support so the issue doesn't arise. That Linux is "a twisty maze of little distros, all different" makes life very difficult for software vendors such as Intel. Frequent changes to glibc and the install environment add complexities to the install and build environments. (Don't get me started on MacOS, which is much worse in this regard.)

[Steve_Lionel]

Reading the release notes, I see it states that MS won't be doing a VS2017 Shell at all. It seems evident that Intel had little choice here. There may also be a contractural inability to keep shipping the VS2015 Shell and the MSVC tools/libraries (entirely a guess on my part.) Why VS2015 is being deprecated early, I don't know - traditionally Intel has supported the most recent three versions of VS.

[JAlexiou]

Devorah H. (Intel) wrote:

Visual Studio 2015 Shell: Please see this article on Deprecation and Removal of Microsoft* Visual Studio Shell* for detailed information. 

Visual Studio 2015 is still supported for all 19.0 Intel Fortran Compiler (part of the Parallel Studio XE 2019) releases. Deprecation means - support will be removed in the future major release. ( Note:VS 2019 preview is out already)

Please note that MS no longer supports temporary projects in VS2019, which means no longer can we create a test Fortran project to try or learn something new only to discard the project files when finished. There is nothing Intel can do about this, although I suspect it is going to severely impact the Fortran community where a lot of test code is needed to become proficient.

This is just an FYI for those of us considering to upgrade to VS2019. Personally, I will stick to VS2017 as much as I can for this exact reason.  And for legacy projects, I still run VS2010 with IVF 15.

[gib]

This is a bit off-topic, but it seems to be an opportunity to learn something.  I am still using IVF 11.0.075 with VS 2005 at home (on my PC at work I have a more recent combination, and the HPC cluster has the latest Intel Fortran).  This is because I have not encountered any limitations, and I would have to pay for a more recent compiler out of my own pocket.  I am interested to know what I am missing - what are the advantages of the latest IVF?

Thanks.

[Steve_Lionel]

gib, you would be missing 1) New language features, 2) bug fixes, 3) performance improvements. If you haven't encountered issues, then there's probably little reason to update if you're just using it for personal code. Just recognize that if you DO run into problems, there's little help available.

[gib]

Steve, the code that I use at home is not personal, it is the same as that I build on the work PC (IVF 2013, VS 2012) and on the cluster (Linux latest version).  I'm wondering which new language features might be useful to me.

[Steve_Lionel]

I suggest you start with The New Features of Fortran 2008 and The New Features of Fortran 2018. Current Intel Fortran supports all of Fortran 2008 and some of Fortran 2018. The C interoperability features are among my favorites (they have applicability in pure Fortran code) The BLOCK construct can be useful, too.

[gib]

Thanks Steve.

[Johannes_Rieke]

Back to the original topic:

Thanks Steve and Devorah for the explanations. Especially the link regarding the VS shell dilemma is enlightening ( Deprecation and Removal of Microsoft* Visual Studio Shell* ). Maybe you can make it sticky here in this forum. I would never have found the article, if not linked by you. (This may prevent topics arising like: "Get integration of 19.0.3 not to work" , "VS shell will not be installed")

So VS shell support is dropped by PSXE 2019 update 3. Glad to hear that VS 2015 is supported for the whole 19 family.

Just one thought: If you just like to have command line compiler functionalities, would Visual C++ Build Tools be sufficient to get the Intel Fortran compilers (19.0.3 and newer) to work (depending libs)? Would this be a possible VS Shell replacement? The license terms seems to be more open for Visual C++ Build Tools. Maybe it is worth a discussion? In case it works, one could use other IDEs of choice...

[FortranFan]

Steve Lionel (Ret.) wrote:

I suggest you start with The New Features of Fortran 2008 and The New Features of Fortran 2018. Current Intel Fortran supports all of Fortran 2008 and some of Fortran 2018. The C interoperability features are among my favorites (they have applicability in pure Fortran code) The BLOCK construct can be useful, too.

@gib states use of "IVF 11.0.075" - isn't that about 5 revisions prior to Intel Fortran 16.0 release where Intel "officially" stated, "the Intel® [Visual] Fortran compiler is fully compliant with the ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004 Fortran language standard (Fortran 2003 Language)".

A question then is the level (and robustness) of Fortran 2003 support in IVF 11.0.075 version and how many features of Fortran 2003 even are being missed by @gib, keeping in mind Fortran 2003 is THE major revision that placed Fortran firmly on a path to modernity.

Any of the references in Steve's blog can also helpful to understand the aspects in modern Fortran which can be employed productively in one's code using the latest Intel Fortran update, v19.0.2: https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2013/12/30/doctor-fortran-in-its-a-modern-fortran-world

[Steve_Lionel]

johannes k. wrote:
Just one thought: If you just like to have command line compiler functionalities, would Visual C++ Build Tools be sufficient to get the Intel Fortran compilers (19.0.3 and newer) to work (depending libs)? Would this be a possible VS Shell replacement? The license terms seems to be more open for Visual C++ Build Tools. Maybe it is worth a discussion? In case it works, one could use other IDEs of choice...

The Update 2 release notes say:

Added support of VS2017 Build Tools

Now it is possible to use Intel Fortran Compiler in compilervars environment within VS2017 Build Tools without installation of entire Microsoft* Visual Studio 2017 IDE.

Currently Intel Fortran projects (.vfproj) do not support MSBuild so they cannot be built within VS2017 Build Tools. To build them please install one of supported VS versions or VS2015 Shell.

So I would assume this is now possible. It used to be that the Windows SDK had the necessary stuff for command line use, but that hasn't been true for many years now.

[gib]

Quote:

A question then is the level (and robustness) of Fortran 2003 support in IVF 11.0.075 version and how many features of Fortran 2003 even are being missed by @gib, keeping in mind Fortran 2003 is THE major revision that placed Fortran firmly on a path to modernity.

The features of Fortran95 that I found really liberating were: allocatable arrays, pointers, derived types, modules, C interoperability.  I'm aware that OO capabilities have been added, but not sure that I'd want to use them.  I've looked through this document:

https://wg5-fortran.org/N1851-N1900/N1891.pdf

but apart from coarrays (which I'm pretty sure I don't want to use) and submodules (which I don't need) most of the changes seem rather minor improvements compared with those I listed above.  Nothing jumps out at me as being likely to change the way I write code.  I guess in aggregate the effect of these changes would be significant, but the problem is that one has to be familiar with them, and at this stage of my life I need to minimise the number of things I have to remember.

[Johannes_Rieke]

Hi gib, please open a new thread. This thread is about deprecated OS and IDEs. Makes it hard to follow the original topic...

[Johannes_Rieke]

UPDATE: After updating the floating license manager and installing VS 2017 Pro, I could install PSXE2019 update 2. Integration into VS 2015 and 2017 (15.9.6) was successful. That's positive ;-)

VS 2015 option was still there in installer of update 2.

I've not encountered integration issues with PSXE2019 update 2 in VS 2017 (15.9.6). So, I think it's worth a try.

Open Question: Today also VS2017 version 15.9.7 has been realeased. Will PSXE 2019 update 2 will harmonize with it?

[Steve_Lionel]

Yes, VS2017 15.9.7 seems to work fine with PSXE 2019 Update 2.