Re: [boost] Windows XP support survey

Subject: Re: [boost] Windows XP support survey
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-05-06 06:34:16

On 6 May 2015 at 13:16, Andrey Semashev wrote:

> On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 1:03 PM, Niall Douglas <s_sourceforge_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> > The Boost SC suggested I ask about Microsoft Windows XP support in
> > Boost libraries here,
> 
> It seems, we're restarting this thread:
> 
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/245008/
> 
> (tl;dr; I proposed to raise the default version to Vista in
> libs/winapi config headers; rejected because XP was still supported at
> the time).

Yep, a valuable thread for everyone to read. However we are now one 
year after official XP support was stopped by Microsoft, and even if 
we decide this now, the next Boost release will need to announce it's 
the last supporting XP, and only the release after that would target 
the Vista API. I would therefore expect XP support to be switched off 
around October, six months from now.

18 months past XP termination seems reasonable to me.

> > 3. Their personal opinion about when would be best to drop mandatory
> > Microsoft Windows XP support. Individual library maintainers can of
> > course choose to keep supporting it.
> 
> I think it is more correct to bump the default Windows target to Vista
> or even 7, if there is any significant difference. Whether or not
> particular libraries support building for older Windows is a choice of
> the library maintainers. I don't think there are mandatory
> requirements on support for a particular Windows version (or a
> particular OS in general).

I think we're talking about library authors being allowed to require 
_WIN32_WINNT >= 0x600 for their library to compile. Say in their 
config.hpp you'd error out if _WIN32_WINNT is < 0x600.

Whether we actually change _WIN32_WINNT to default to 0x600 or even 
0x601 I think is a separate matter.

Niall

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