Support Windows XP

[Nathan S.]

On Monday, 3 May 2021 at 14:10:30 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> On 5/3/21 6:43 AM, user1234 wrote:
>> On Monday, 3 May 2021 at 09:53:42 UTC, Dukc wrote:
>>> On Sunday, 2 May 2021 at 18:15:04 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
>>>> I modified the PE header (set major version and subsystem to 
>>>> 5) and it worked 🌞
>>>>
>>>> No idea how much ub this causes tho.
>>>
>>> Care to explain this in beginner-friendly way? I think it's 
>>> likely it will help other people with same kinds of problems.
>>>
>>> DMD for Windows should work just as well in XP as in later 
>>> versions, as far as I know. I don't think it depends on any 
>>> functionality introduced after XP.
>> 
>> operating system + druntime bindings might be the only issue.
>> 
>> Support for XP was dropped because it went EOL and that's it.
>> The compiler itself just needs to read files, write files, 
>> call processes and that's it.
>
> Typically, the reason D stops supporting older OSes is because 
> something changes that is fundamental to the language.
>
> My understanding is that something changed in how 
> thread-local-storage is supported, so XP is no longer valid for 
> the current compilers. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure 
> there was a definite reason for dropping support, even if it 
> wasn't TLS.
>
> Of course, you can still use an older compiler.
>
> -Steve


My recollection is that dropping official support for Windows XP 
was based on workload rather than any technical reason, and 
simultaneously that policy is to "soft support" it by accepting 
any patches that fix Windows XP problems and not deliberately 
doing things to break Windows XP.