[fpc-devel] End of support for Win XP?

[Martok]

Am 01.02.2018 um 14:08 schrieb Denis Kozlov:
> It still feels *very early* to drop support for Windows XP. I haven't used it
> properly in years, but I can't say the same about the target user audience. I
> still test some builds against Windows XP.

This may be a very stupid question, but please believe me it is not as troll-y
as it might sound...

What would be the point of supporting older CPUs, if we don't actually support
the OS that runs/ran on them? Or the other way around, there'd be no point in
generating code compatible with a specific processor if the minimum supported
*OS* doesn't run on that cpu.
I'm specifically not talking about the compiler itself (or Lazarus), just being
able to target a platform. That mostly limits the RTL I guess.

I still support Win2000 with one application (with just a few compat shims), and
used to have a Delphi 4 install specifically for one (industry) machine running
NT4 at a previous gig. At my current one, we have a Win95 box running expensive
hardware. True, I ported that program to Win32 last year (Did you know BC++ 5
runs on Win10? I didn't.), but still... that stuff is not as rare as one might hope.

What I'm trying to say: it would be amazing if there was a way to be
forward-compatible without entirely scrapping old stuff. Maybe do the same as MS
does, and have IFDEFs for the API level in the headers? I wouldn't mind having
to recompile the RTL.


By the way: Dropping XP support also drops ReactOS support. I'm not sure if we
ever officially had it, but it is on the Wiki.


Martok