For a long time opencv has been (and still is,) the main infrastructure for 2d development.
When going 3d, PCL is the natural choise: it has vast range of algorithms implemented, online API documentation, and the backbone of the industry's leading companies.
That said, How can it be that the last binary is for IDE 5 years ago?(!!!) last update was in 2013 (probably due to the death of OPENNI, thank you Apple), the implementation is obsolete , and I am not even talking about c++1x, nevertheless the futuristic compute capability 5.x.
Is PCL a dead project? are there's any predecessors?
I too work with PCL and find the outdated libraries frustrating. However as PhilLab mentioned the GitHub page is still active.
HOWEVER: Thanks to Tsuksa Sugiura there exists a perfect pre-built package for Windows + VS2015. He even maintains this and updates it. Both x86 and x64.
ALSO it is possible to use 1.8.0 RC2 on the NVidia Tegra platforms, such as the Jetson TX1. here the CMake system is working relatively well.
AND ROS supports it (again defaults to 1.7.2, but can run on 1.8.x)
So to conclude; sure no one is packing it into tidy releases, but the package is slowly getting advanced. And it kind of is our only choice...
Also to the moderators: I would have commented this on PhilLab's answer as I feel this doesn't dignify a new answer... but on this strange community you can answer before being able to comment. Sorry.