Re: [boost] [winapi] Default target Windows version

Subject: Re: [boost] [winapi] Default target Windows version
From: Lars Viklund (zao_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-10-16 04:46:44

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 02:20:36AM +0400, Andrey Semashev wrote:
> On Tuesday 15 October 2013 23:05:45 Olaf van der Spek wrote:
> > 
> > What's the concrete advantage of defaulting to Vista? Performance?
> 
> Yes, mostly. Vista has builtin support for condition variables and read/write 
> mutexes, for example. Compiler-based TLS can be used safely with dlls. 
> GetTickCount64 can also be useful in some contexts and is difficult to 
> emulate. All these features will find their use at least in Boost.Sync and 
> Boost.Log (the latter currently uses its own protocol for enabling use of 
> these APIs, but it will be ported eventually).

Some of the things I really look forward to when I personally can drop XP
support is the Slim Reader/Writer (SRW) Locks [1], the ability to
specify relative RPATHs in manifests, SHGetKnownFolderPath (actually
handles paths longer than MAX_PATH) [3].

There are a lot of neat stuff all over the API which is gated by being
introduced post-XP.

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa904937(v=vs.85).aspx
[2]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb762188(v=vs.85).aspx

-- 
Lars Viklund | zao_at_[hidden]