document the eigen2 support stages

2 files changed, 116 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/doc/A05_PortingFrom2To3.dox b/doc/A05_PortingFrom2To3.dox
index 152578be8..13839a2a2 100644
--- a/doc/A05_PortingFrom2To3.dox
+++ b/doc/A05_PortingFrom2To3.dox
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ and gives tips to help porting your application from Eigen2 to Eigen3.
 \b Table \b of \b contents
   - \ref CompatibilitySupport
   - \ref Using
+  - \ref ComplexDot
   - \ref VectorBlocks
   - \ref Corners
   - \ref CoefficientWiseOperations
@@ -15,18 +16,20 @@ and gives tips to help porting your application from Eigen2 to Eigen3.
   - \ref TriangularSolveInPlace
   - \ref Decompositions
   - \ref LinearSolvers
+  - \ref GeometryModule
   - \ref Transform
   - \ref LazyVsNoalias
   - \ref AlignMacros
   - \ref AlignedMap
+  - \ref eiPrefix
 
 \section CompatibilitySupport Eigen2 compatibility support
 
-In order to ease the switch from Eigen2 to Eigen3, Eigen3 features  \ref Eigen2Support "Eigen2 support modes".
+In order to ease the switch from Eigen2 to Eigen3, Eigen3 features \ref Eigen2SupportModes "Eigen2 support modes".
 
 The quick way to enable this is to define the \c EIGEN2_SUPPORT preprocessor token \b before including any Eigen header (typically it should be set in your project options).
 
-Moreover, we also provided a \b staged \b migration \b path which may be useful to migrate larger projects from Eigen2 to Eigen3. This explained on the \ref Eigen2Support "Eigen2 support modes" page.
+A more powerful, \em staged migration path is also provided, which may be useful to migrate larger projects from Eigen2 to Eigen3. This explained in the \ref Eigen2SupportModes "Eigen 2 support modes" page. 
 
 \section Using The USING_PART_OF_NAMESPACE_EIGEN macro
 
@@ -35,6 +38,12 @@ The USING_PART_OF_NAMESPACE_EIGEN macro has been removed. In Eigen 3, just do:
 using namespace Eigen;
 \endcode
 
+\section ComplexDot Dot products over complex numbers
+
+This is the single trickiest change between Eigen 2 and Eigen 3. It only affects code using \c std::complex numbers as scalar type.
+
+Eigen 2's dot product was linear in the first variable. Eigen 3's dot product is linear in the second variable. In other words, the Eigen 2 code \code x.dot(y) \endcode is equivalent to the Eigen 3 code \code y.dot(x) \endcode In yet other words, dot products are complex-conjugated in Eigen 3 compared to Eigen 2. The switch to the new convention was commanded by common usage, especially with the notation \f$ x^Ty \f$ for dot products of column-vectors.
+
 \section VectorBlocks Vector blocks
 
 <table class="manual">
@@ -231,6 +240,10 @@ the selfadjointView API allows you to select the \n
 triangular part to work on</td></tr>
 </table>
 
+\section GeometryModule Changes in the Geometry module
+
+The Geometry module is the one that changed the most. If you rely heavily on it, it's probably a good idea to use the \ref Eigen2SupportModes "Eigen 2 support modes" to perform your migration.
+
 \section Transform The Transform class
 
 In Eigen 2, the Transform class didn't really know whether it was a projective or affine transformation. In Eigen 3, it takes a new \a Mode template parameter, which indicates whether it's \a Projective or \a Affine transform. The default is \a Projective.
@@ -277,7 +290,7 @@ New in Eigen3 is the Aligned option. See the documentation of class Map. Use it
 \code
 Map<Vector4f, Aligned> myMappedVector(some_aligned_array);
 \endcode
-There also are related convenience static methods:
+There also are related convenience static methods, which actually are the preferred way as they take care of such things as constness:
 \code
 result = Vector4f::MapAligned(some_aligned_array);
 \endcode
diff --git a/doc/A10_Eigen2SupportModes.dox b/doc/A10_Eigen2SupportModes.dox
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..c9088fac9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/A10_Eigen2SupportModes.dox
@@ -0,0 +1,100 @@
+namespace Eigen {
+
+/** \page Eigen2SupportModes Eigen 2 support modes
+
+This page documents the Eigen2 support modes, a powerful tool to help migrating your project from Eigen 2 to Eigen 3.
+Also don't miss our page on \ref Eigen2ToEigen3 "API changes" between Eigen 2 and Eigen 3.
+
+\b Table \b of \b contents
+  - \ref EIGEN2_SUPPORT_Macro
+  - \ref StagedMigrationPathOverview
+  - \ref Stage10
+  - \ref Stage20
+  - \ref Stage30
+  - \ref Stage40
+  - \ref FinallyDropAllEigen2Support
+  - \ref ABICompatibility
+
+\section EIGEN2_SUPPORT_Macro The quick way: define EIGEN2_SUPPORT
+
+By defining EIGEN2_SUPPORT before including any Eigen 3 header, you get back a large part of the Eigen 2 API, while keeping the Eigen 3 API and ABI unchanged.
+
+This defaults to the \ref Stage30 "stage 30" described below.
+
+The rest of this page describes an optional, more powerful \em staged migration path.
+
+\section StagedMigrationPathOverview Overview of the staged migration path
+
+The primary reason why EIGEN2_SUPPORT alone may not be enough to migrate a large project from Eigen 2 to Eigen 3 is that some of the Eigen 2 API is inherently incompatible with the Eigen 3 API. This happens when the same identifier is used in Eigen 2 and in Eigen 3 with different meanings. To help migrate projects that rely on such API, we provide a staged migration path allowing to perform the migration \em incrementally.
+
+It goes as follows:
+\li Step 0: start with a project using Eigen 2.
+\li Step 1: build your project against Eigen 3 with \ref Stage10 "Eigen 2 support stage 10". This mode enables maximum compatibility with the Eigen 2 API, with just a few exceptions.
+\li Step 2: build your project against Eigen 3 with \ref Stage10 "Eigen 2 support stage 20". This mode forces you to add eigen2_ prefixes to the Eigen2 identifiers that conflict with Eigen 3 API.
+\li Step 3: build your project against Eigen 3 with \ref Stage10 "Eigen 2 support stage 30". This mode enables the full Eigen 3 API.
+\li Step 4: build your project against Eigen 3 with \ref Stage10 "Eigen 2 support stage 40". This mode enables the full Eigen 3 strictness on matters, such as const-correctness, where Eigen 2 was looser.
+\li Step 5: build your project against Eigen 3 without any Eigen 2 support mode.
+
+\section Stage10 Stage 10: define EIGEN2_SUPPORT_STAGE10_FULL_EIGEN2_API
+
+Enable this mode by defining the EIGEN2_SUPPORT_STAGE10_FULL_EIGEN2_API preprocessor macro before including any Eigen 3 header.
+
+This mode maximizes support for the Eigen 2 API. As a result, it does not offer the full Eigen 3 API. Also, it doesn't offer quite 100% of the Eigen 2 API.
+
+The part of the Eigen 3 API that is not present in this mode, is Eigen 3's Geometry module. Indeed, this mode completely replaces it by a copy of Eigen 2's Geometry module.
+
+The parts of the API that are still not 100% Eigen 2 compatible in this mode are:
+\li Dot products over complex numbers. Eigen 2's dot product was linear in the first variable. Eigen 3's dot product is linear in the second variable. In other words, the Eigen 2 code \code x.dot(y) \endcode is equivalent to the Eigen 3 code \code y.dot(x) \endcode In yet other words, dot products are complex-conjugated in Eigen 3 compared to Eigen 2. The switch to the new convention was commanded by common usage, especially with the notation \f$ x^Ty \f$ for dot products of column-vectors.
+\li The Sparse module.
+\li Certain fine details of linear algebraic decompositions. For example, LDLT decomposition is now pivoting in Eigen 3 whereas it wasn't in Eigen 2, so code that was relying on its underlying matrix structure will break.
+
+\section Stage20 Stage 20: define EIGEN2_SUPPORT_STAGE20_RESOLVE_API_CONFLICTS
+
+Enable this mode by defining the EIGEN2_SUPPORT_STAGE10_FULL_EIGEN2_API preprocessor macro before including any Eigen 3 header.
+
+This mode removes the Eigen 2 API that is directly conflicting with Eigen 3 API. Instead, these bits of Eigen 2 API remain available with eigen2_ prefixes. The main examples of such API are:
+\li the whole Geometry module. For example, replace \c Quaternion by \c eigen2_Quaternion, replace \c Transform3f by \c eigen2_Transform3f, etc.
+\li the lu() method to obtain a LU decomposition. Replace by eigen2_lu().
+
+There is also one more eigen2_-prefixed identifier that you should know about, even though its use is not checked at compile time by this mode: the dot() method. As was discussed above, over complex numbers, its meaning is different between Eigen 2 and Eigen 3. You can use eigen2_dot() to get the Eigen 2 behavior.
+
+\section Stage30 Stage 30: define EIGEN2_SUPPORT_STAGE30_FULL_EIGEN3_API
+
+Enable this mode by defining the EIGEN2_SUPPORT_STAGE30_FULL_EIGEN3_API preprocessor macro before including any Eigen 3 header. Also, this mode is what you get by default when you just define EIGEN2_SUPPORT.
+
+This mode gives you the full unaltered Eigen 3 API, while still keeping as much support as possible for the Eigen 2 API.
+
+The eigen2_-prefixed identifiers are still available, but at this stage you should now replace them by Eigen 3 identifiers.
+
+\section Stage40 Stage 40: define EIGEN2_SUPPORT_STAGE40_FULL_EIGEN3_STRICTNESS
+
+Enable this mode by defining the EIGEN2_SUPPORT_STAGE30_FULL_EIGEN3_API preprocessor macro before including any Eigen 3 header.
+
+This mode tightens the last bits of strictness, especially const-correctness, that had to be loosened to support what Eigen 2 allowed. For example, this code compiled in Eigen 2:
+\code
+const float array[4];
+x = Map<Vector4f>(array);
+\endcode
+That allowed to circumvent constness. This is no longer allowed in Eigen 3. If you have to map const data in Eigen 3, map it as a const-qualified type. However, rather than explictly constructing Map objects, we strongly encourage you to use the static Map methods instead, as they take care of all of this for you:
+\code
+const float array[4];
+x = Vector4f::Map(array);
+\endcode
+This lets Eigen do the right thing for you and works equally well in Eigen 2 and in Eigen 3.
+
+\section FinallyDropAllEigen2Support Finally drop all Eigen 2 support
+
+Stage 40 is the first where it's "comfortable" to stay for a little longer period, since it preserves 100% Eigen 3 compatibility. However, we still encourage you to complete your migration as quickly as possible. While we do run the Eigen 2 test suite against Eigen 3's stage 10 support mode, we can't guarantee the same level of support and quality assurance for Eigen 2 support as we do for Eigen 3 itself, especially not in the long term.
+
+\section ABICompatibility What about ABI compatibility?
+
+It goes as follows:
+\li Stage 10 already is ABI compatible with Eigen 3 for the basic (Matrix, Array, SparseMatrix...) types. However, since this stage uses a copy of Eigen 2's Geometry module instead of Eigen 3's own Geometry module, the ABI in the Geometry module is not Eigen 3 compatible.
+\li Stage 20 removes the Eigen 3-incompatible Eigen 2 Geometry module (it remains available with eigen2_ prefix). So at this stage, all the identifiers that exist in Eigen 3 have the Eigen 3 ABI (and API).
+\li Stage 30 introduces the remaining Eigen 3 identifiers. So at this stage, you have the full Eigen 3 ABI.
+\li Stage 40 is no different than Stage 30 in these matters.
+
+
+*/
+
+}