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RE: [RFC] Officially drop support for Windows '9X and NT 4.0 with Subversion 1.6

From: Bert Huijben \(TCG\) <b.huijben_at_competence.biz>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:12:14 +0200

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lieven Govaerts [mailto:svnlgo_at_mobsol.be]
> Sent: woensdag 17 september 2008 18:00
> To: Bert Huijben
> Cc: dev_at_subversion.tigris.org
> Subject: Re: [RFC] Officially drop support for Windows '9X and NT 4.0
> with Subversion 1.6
>
> Bert Huijben wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Subversion 1.5 started using MultiByteToWideChar for its utf-8
> > conversions on Windows, this made subversion incompatible with
> Windows
> > '95. Theoretically we might still support Windows NT 4.0 and Windows
> > '98, but I haven't heard seen user reports on them in a long time.
> > (The only recent issue I can remember was a sspi initialization issue
> on
> > NT 4.0 that didn't get much attention).
> ..
> > This would at least allow us to remove the dynamic loading for the
> > crypto-api and maybe also from the NTLM/SSPI support.
> >
>
> Is there anything that we want to add that's not possible on '98 or
> NT4?
> What makes us want to do this change in 1.6 and not in say 1.7 or 1.8?

My guess is we are already broken for those Windows versions and aren't
going to test on it any more. And we make it ourselves very difficult in an
attempt to keep compatibility without making sure we are actually
compatible.

Several systems are always available on Windows 2000 and higher. Full
Unicode support and the crypto api are the primary ones. IPv6 is always
available on XP and higher and optional on Windows 2000.

You just have to write and maintain five times as many code to maintain the
code as optional. (LoadLibrary, GetProcAddr, typedefs, etc. etc.)

Zhakov just fixed some issues related to dynamically loading and unloading
the cryptoapi every time we use it. None of this would be necessary if we
just link against the library.

> Why not send this proposal to users_at_s.t.o to see if there are people
> still using these old platforms?

I don't think you can find subversion 1.5 binaries on the net that say they
support Windows '9X or NT 4.0 except for cygwin.

We can ask if somebody uses it, but you will need someone to build a '9X or
NT 4.0 release if none of us is going to provide one.
(The SlikSVN support address didn't get any mails on supporting other
Windows versions. Most mails there are thank you's for the Windows x64
release)

Stefan Küng wrote:
> It would be a small problem if you would drop support for win2k because
> some companies still have those around.

We see about 0.5% of the AnkhSVN 2.0 users is using Windows 2000 in our
update service log, so I won't suggest removing support for that. (I also
got specific reports on Windows 2000 support from users of the SharpSvn
library).

There is nothing to gain for us at this time by dropping Windows 2000
support right now.
 
        Bert

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Received on 2008-09-17 19:12:34 CEST

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