On Friday, 2 August 2013 at 09:28:46 UTC, Dejan Lekic wrote:
> On Thursday, 1 August 2013 at 23:00:09 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 8/1/2013 3:28 PM, Stewart Gordon wrote:
>>> What do people think we should do?  Opinions please!
>>
>> Even supporting XP is problematic because of the badly broken thread local storage support for DLLs in it, which D heavily relies on. I wouldn't say this for a C++ compiler, but for D, I kinda feel that Windows 7 should be the minimum.
>>
>> We can certainly ditch all the Windows 9x support.
>
> Windows XP user-base is still very big. I would vote against ditching the XP support. The main reason ReactOS (http://www.reactos.org) is becoming so popular is precisely because XP users consider it as alternative once the XP support from Microsoft is gone. ReactOS is slowly reaching the stable state, it even "works" on my HP Z200 workstation at work! :)
>
> I have a Windows XP netbook that I still use on a daily basis! :) All I am trying to say is - XP is not dead, yet...

Here is a link for you to backup my claim - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems . If you go to http://www.netmarketshare.com/ and pick the Operating Systems -> Desktop Share by Version option, you will see the most recent data. Windows XP holds 37.2% of the desktop share - IMHO it is not something to ignore.

02-Aug-2013 09:51, Sönke Ludwig пишет:
> Am 01.08.2013 22:59, schrieb Stewart Gordon:
>> - Define a mixin template along the lines of __AW in newer versions of
>> MinGW, so that
>>
>>      version (Unicode) {
>>          alias QwertW Qwert;
>>      } else {
>>          alias QwertA Qwert;
>>      }
>>
>> can become simply
>>
>>      mixin DECLARE_AW!("Qwert");
>>
>
> I would seriously take into consideration to just drop the "A" versions.
> D is unicode by nature, the "W" versions are supported by all NT systems
> (since Windows 95 using MSLU), and using an ANSI version of a function
> also just begs for bugs if typed as "char*" instead of "ubyte*". Many
> newer functions also just have a single wide string variant.
>
> IMO this is just legacy cruft that was maybe still useful in times when
> supporting Windows 95 was important and MSLU had to be installed as an
> explicit add-on, but for nothing else really (although frequently used
> in C programs because it saves typing an additional character: "" vs.
> L"" or even _T("")).

+1,000,000


> Also switching API based on a version statement always introduces a
> chance to break interoperability of two libraries that require the
> version to be set differently.
>
> The issue here of course is breaking existing code that doesn't use the
> "Unicode" path. Not sure how serious this is, though...


-- 
Dmitry Olshansky

On Friday, 2 August 2013 at 09:28:46 UTC, Dejan Lekic wrote:
> Windows XP user-base is still very big. I would vote against ditching the XP support.

Me too. I guess I'd be ok with it being "supported" rather than /supported/, but XP is still a *lot* of users and can't be completely ignored.

"Walter Bright" <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:ktfgps$2ghh$1@digitalmars.com...
> On 8/1/2013 10:17 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> Regardless, the biggest gain by far will be being able to ditch support
>> for XP
>> and require at least Vista. As bad as Vista was, it had some major
>> improvements to the Win32 API (like adding a proper condition variable).
>
> As a practical matter, we do not test on XP, and so it is disingenuous to claim official support for it.
>
> I suggest saying we "officially" support Win7 or later, and unofficially support versions back to XP. Unofficially means there's code there to support it, and we accept pull requests to fix bugs in it, we will try not to break it, but we don't test or guarantee that it'll work.
>
> It's like how we "support" Solaris and a VC-built dmd.

It would be rather silly to stop officially supporting the second most popular desktop operating system.

On 8/2/2013 1:53 AM, Stewart Gordon wrote:
> On 02/08/2013 09:47, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> <snip>
>> I'm not sure. Possibly. Given that we previously had code that checked the
>> version of Windows and used the A functions if it was running on Windows 9x,
>> there's probably a decent chance that something similar could be done with the
>> Vista vs pre-Vista time functions. I'm not sure that it would be worth the
>> extra complication though. What's there works. It's just not quite as clean as
>> it would be otherwise.
>
> If we add stuff like this, it's getting beyond the point of being a set of
> Windows API bindings.  Stuff like this should be done, if at all, by a
> higher-level library.

I'm not suggesting this workaround code go in windows.di. It should be in std.datetime.

On Friday, 2 August 2013 at 14:26:12 UTC, Daniel Murphy wrote:
> It would be rather silly to stop officially supporting the second most
> popular desktop operating system.

Well, it is no longer supported by Microsoft itself, isn't it? There is a difference between formally supporting  and spending any considerable efforts.

On 8/2/2013 2:28 AM, Dejan Lekic wrote:
> All I am trying to say is - XP is not dead, yet...

Is it feeling much better?

On 8/2/2013 6:41 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Friday, 2 August 2013 at 09:28:46 UTC, Dejan Lekic wrote:
>> Windows XP user-base is still very big. I would vote against ditching the XP
>> support.
>
> Me too. I guess I'd be ok with it being "supported" rather than /supported/, but
> XP is still a *lot* of users and can't be completely ignored.

I'm not suggesting breaking support for XP. Just unofficial support, meaning we won't break it, and we'll accept pull requests to fix issues with it.

On Friday, 2 August 2013 at 19:05:30 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

> I'm not suggesting breaking support for XP. Just unofficial support, meaning we won't break it, and we'll accept pull requests to fix issues with it.

Just to be sure that I understand correctly what this thread is about: Are you talking about the platforms that DMD itself runs on, or the programs that are created with DMD, or both?

On 8/2/2013 3:25 PM, Hans Mustermann wrote:
> On Friday, 2 August 2013 at 19:05:30 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
>> I'm not suggesting breaking support for XP. Just unofficial support, meaning
>> we won't break it, and we'll accept pull requests to fix issues with it.
>
> Just to be sure that I understand correctly what this thread is about: Are you
> talking about the platforms that DMD itself runs on, or the programs that are
> created with DMD, or both?

Programs created with DMD.