[std.database]

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Monday, October 17, 2011 11:37 simendsjo wrote:
> On 17.10.2011 20:24, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > There is code in druntime and Phobos which special-cases for Windows 98
> > and earlier (e.g. std.file using the A functions instead of the W
> > functions if the version of Windows that you're running on is too old to
> > have the W functions). Now, personally, I would love it if we just said
> > that you have to have at least Win2k if not WinXP. It would be_great_ 
> > to be able to assume at least Vista, since it added a number of useful
> > functions, but XP is still too prevalent for that to be reasonable.
> > Regardless, supporting older versions of Windows is just plain
> > irritating, since it restricts what you can do, and D is new enough and
> > Win2k old enough that I find it perfectly reasonable to insist that you
> > have WinXP or newer, but that's not what we're doing at this point.
> 
> I'm not even sure W2K support is in great demand. Even XP is on a strong
> downwards slope, and Win7 has a greater share of the market now. XP is
> still needed for several years, but Win98...? When was the last time
> anyone encountered Win98? Does anyone even make software with Win98
> support anymore?
> I doubt D looses any market share by ditching support for operating
> systems that doesn't even have vendor support. If it restricts usage on
> newer operating systems I'm in favor of dropping it, but I guess there's
> a good reason why Win98 is supported (or just legacy from 10 years back..?)

There have been bug reports on it (so someone is using D with Windows 98), and 
Walter seems to think that D should run on as much as it possibly can. So, it 
looks like until we have a solid reason why we _can't_ reasonably support 
Windows 98, we're going to.

- Jonathan M Davis