Upgrade From OWLNext 6 To OWLNext 7

[Junior Dev]

Hii,

I am reaching out to inquire about the upgrade process from OWLNext 6 to OWLNext 7. Specifically, I would like to understand the following:

What are the key differences between OWLNext 6 and OWLNext 7?
I am particularly interested in any new features or improvements that may impact our usage.

What changes do we need to implement during the upgrade?

Are there specific steps we should follow to ensure a smooth transition?

Are there any additional considerations or resources you recommend for this upgrade?

Any guidance on training or support would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your assistance! I look forward to your response.

Best regards,
JD

[Vidar Hasfjord]

Hi Junior,

Upgrading from OWLNext 6 to 7 should generally be painless.

See:

• Changes in OWLNext 7 (release description and revision history)
• "User Guide: Upgrade to OWLNext with ease (documentation, tips, FAQ, etc.)", especially link to "Help on incompatible changes in 7 series"
• "Upgrading from OWL | Changes in OWLNext", especially "Replacement of the protected TWindow::GetClassName overload".
  
  

Tip: If you get a lot of compilation errors during the upgrade, it can be helpful to turn on OWL_COMPAT build mode temporarily. This will allow more old code to compile without changes. Then when the code is up and running, turn OWL_COMPAT off and make the remaining changes needed, if any.

If you run into specific issues not described in our wiki or in our FAQ, then let us know here in the forum.

Good luck with the upgrade!

[Junior Dev]

Hii @Vidar

Currently my Solution is on owlnext 6.44 and cpp 14 , 
before updating to OWLNext 7.12 , do i need upgrade my solution to cpp 17 ?

[Vidar Hasfjord]

@juniordev wrote:

do i need upgrade my solution to [C++17]?

Yes, OWLNext 7 relies on C++17 conformance.

https://sourceforge.net/p/owlnext/wiki/OWLNext_Stable_Releases/#7-series

OWLNext 7.12

You should use the latest release 7.0.15, with bug fixes.

https://sourceforge.net/p/owlnext/wiki/OWLNext_Stable_Releases/#version-7015-7268

[Junior Dev]

Hii

while upgrading project to cpp 17 from cpp14 , getting multiple errors for byte ambiguous symbol?
is there any way to solve it .

Support for OWLNext 7.For that, we first need to upgrade the C++ standard to C++17.While upgrading, I encountered a lot of errors related to byte types.

Error C2872 'byte': ambiguous symbol

i think the reason is there are multiple byte types are defined like :-

but when i explicitly define (scope) like this std::byte then issue is fixed but in most of the cases i need to do type casting .
and one more thing is , in cs_defs.h file we have define -
the ambiguity arises because C++17 introduces std::byte, which conflicts with this .

can we changes the name of our typedef ? something like this :- byte -> _byte

or ::byte operator accesses the global namespace. we have defined typedef unsigned char byte; in a header file, ::byte will refer to that definition if it is included and in scope.

[Ognyan Chernokozhev]

Can you try to remove that definition and to make sure that everywhere the std::byte type is used instead?
I think in general use of such custom type definitions, especially using #define should be avoided in modern code.