Hello, I am currently using:
* Windows XP SP3 32-bit
* Visual Studio 2008 SP1

I receive the following error when trying to build a HelloWorld example:

"C:\Program Files\VisualD\pipedmd.exe is not a valid Win32 application."

My questions are:
(1) Is the newest Visual D still meant to support legacy setups such as mine?
(2) If yes, why isn't there a 32-bit build?
(3) If not, what is the last release of Visual D known to work on my setup?

Thank you.

On 23.09.2017 15:56, AB wrote:
> Hello, I am currently using:
> * Windows XP SP3 32-bit
> * Visual Studio 2008 SP1
> 
> I receive the following error when trying to build a HelloWorld example:
> 
> "C:\Program Files\VisualD\pipedmd.exe is not a valid Win32 application."
> 
> My questions are:
> (1) Is the newest Visual D still meant to support legacy setups such as mine?
> (2) If yes, why isn't there a 32-bit build?
> (3) If not, what is the last release of Visual D known to work on my setup?
> 
> Thank you.
> 

It is supposed to work, yes. I suspect the problem is that the 32-bit executables have been linked with the MS-linker default OS version 6.0.

I switched to the MS linker with v0.45.1, so any version before that should work on XP, too.

On Monday, 25 September 2017 at 07:00:40 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
>
> It is supposed to work, yes. I suspect the problem is that the 32-bit executables have been linked with the MS-linker default OS version 6.0.
>
> I switched to the MS linker with v0.45.1, so any version before that should work on XP, too.

I have installed the previous version, v.45.0, but now the build fails in a different way:

---

cannot monitor 64-bit executable dmd, no suitable tracker.exe found
cannot monitor 64-bit executable C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\link.exe, no suitable tracker.exe found
"Win32\Debug\ConsoleApp1.exe" not created!
Building Win32\Debug\ConsoleApp1.exe failed!

---

The above error message seems nonsensical, because the link.exe file is a 32-bit executable.

Note that the installed DMD version is: 2.076.0.

On 25.09.2017 15:15, AB wrote:
> On Monday, 25 September 2017 at 07:00:40 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
>>
>> It is supposed to work, yes. I suspect the problem is that the 32-bit executables have been linked with the MS-linker default OS version 6.0.
>>
>> I switched to the MS linker with v0.45.1, so any version before that should work on XP, too.
> 
> I have installed the previous version, v.45.0, but now the build fails in a different way:
> 
> ---
> 
> cannot monitor 64-bit executable dmd, no suitable tracker.exe found
> cannot monitor 64-bit executable C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\link.exe, no suitable tracker.exe found
> "Win32\Debug\ConsoleApp1.exe" not created!
> Building Win32\Debug\ConsoleApp1.exe failed!
> 
> ---
> 
> The above error message seems nonsensical, because the link.exe file is a 32-bit executable.
> 
> Note that the installed DMD version is: 2.076.0.
> 

The error message is wrong in this case, the actual problem is probably that VS2008 doesn't come with MS-Build (which includes tracker.exe), or it isn't found.

You could either try installing MSBuild or go back to Visual D 0.44.2. That version has an alternative mechanism for dependency tracking (which might cause some unnecessary builds due to changes in dmd 2.076).

On Monday, 25 September 2017 at 17:55:08 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
>
> The error message is wrong in this case, the actual problem is probably that VS2008 doesn't come with MS-Build (which includes tracker.exe), or it isn't found.
>
> You could either try installing MSBuild or go back to Visual D 0.44.2. That version has an alternative mechanism for dependency tracking (which might cause some unnecessary builds due to changes in dmd 2.076).

For simplicity, I will downgrade to Visual D 0.44.2.

That said, which version of MSBuild would be appropriate in my case? Version 2015 (14) has requirements above Windows XP.

Back to Visual D, do you intend to fix these compatibility issues in future releases? Or will you drop support for legacy OS/IDE?

On Monday, 25 September 2017 at 20:29:19 UTC, AB wrote:

>
> Back to Visual D, do you intend to fix these compatibility issues in future releases? Or will you drop support for legacy OS/IDE?

DMD no longer supports Windows XP. Walter recently said [1]:

"the D community doesn't have the resources to support systems that have been abandoned by their vendors. This is why D officially doesn't support Windows XP anymore."

I thought Vista was the minimum version, but the DMD Windows page says "Windows 7 or later" [2].

I can't find a minimum Windows version for LDC, but the instructions for building it say Visual Studio 2015 is required [2], which in turn lists Windows 7 SP 1 as the minimum required Windows version for installation [4] (though it can target XP).

Does it make sense, then, to maintain support for XP in Visual D? Given that it's a one-man project, I would expect the answer to be "no". But I'm not Rainer :-)

[1]: http://forum.dlang.org/post/oic1ms$1k2e$1@digitalmars.com
[2]: https://dlang.org/dmd-windows.html
[3]: https://wiki.dlang.org/LDC
[4]: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/productinfo/vs2015-sysrequirements-vs

On 25.09.2017 22:29, AB wrote:
> On Monday, 25 September 2017 at 17:55:08 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
>>
>> The error message is wrong in this case, the actual problem is probably that VS2008 doesn't come with MS-Build (which includes tracker.exe), or it isn't found.
>>
>> You could either try installing MSBuild or go back to Visual D 0.44.2. That version has an alternative mechanism for dependency tracking (which might cause some unnecessary builds due to changes in dmd 2.076).
> 
> For simplicity, I will downgrade to Visual D 0.44.2.
> 
> That said, which version of MSBuild would be appropriate in my case? Version 2015 (14) has requirements above Windows XP.

MSBuild 12.0 should be fine. I have found an old version of it on a backup that should run on XP, but my current installation seems to require Win7.

> 
> Back to Visual D, do you intend to fix these compatibility issues in future releases? Or will you drop support for legacy OS/IDE?
> 

If it is actually only the OS version that needs to be specified on the linker command line, I plan to fix that. I'm not aware of other problems but can't guarantee it will continue to work.