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

Subject: Re: [boost] [winapi] Default target Windows version
From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-10-22 09:30:13

On Wednesday 16 October 2013 00:50:21 you wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> First, a little intro. As part of ongoing work on Boost.Sync we've created
> quite a few headers with WinAPI declarations that are often needed in Boost
> libraries. The headers are in boost/detail/winapi and can be used by any
> library that wishes to avoid including windows.h.
> 
> The headers declare some symbols that depend on the target Windows version.
> For example, GetTickCount64 only appeared in Windows Vista. The user can
> define BOOST_USE_WINAPI_VERSION macro before including any Boost headers to
> indicate the target WinAPI version Boost should use. If the macro is not
> defined, the headers attempt to deduce the target Windows version from the
> _WIN32_WINNT and WINVER macros, if they are defined by the user. Lastly, if
> everything fails, the headers fall back to a default, which is currently
> Windows XP.
> 
> I wanted to ask the community if it is appropriate to raise the default to
> Windows Vista. The rationale for this is that Vista introduced a lot of
> useful APIs (in thread synchronization, in particular) and XP is losing its
> popularity and soon will be completely unsupported by Microsoft. Also, I'm
> not sure what is the current state of affair, but Microsoft already tried
> to drop pre-Vista targets in MSVC.
> 
> Note that I'm not suggesting to drop support for pre-Vista Windows. The user
> will still be able to enable previous versions of WinAPI in one of the
> mentioned above ways.
> 
> Lastly, I'd like to encourage Boost developers to use this protocol for
> defining WinAPI version used by libraries. It would be ideal if by defining
> BOOST_USE_WINAPI_VERSION the user would be able to control WinAPI version
> used by all Boost libraries, not just Boost.Sync and Boost.Chrono (the
> current users of these headers). If you want to add support for this
> protocol to your library, simply include boost/detail/winapi/config.hpp.
> This will result in BOOST_USE_WINAPI_VERSION being defined so that it can
> be checked by the library. Other headers boost/detail/winapi make use of
> this macro, you can see them as an example.

Since there were no objections, I've changed the default to Vista. Please, let 
me know if there are problems with it.