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Quasar

The VC2005/Windows 9x question

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There are some upcoming changes to the Eternity Engine that bring the ability to continue making Windows 9x-supporting builds via VC++ 2005 into question. At this point it is basically a question of when, and not if, support for this compiler will be dropped:

  • A major external dependency is about to be added and I would rather not have to back-port it to the earlier compiler with its own conflictingly-named project files.
  • I want to steer EE development toward adoption of C++11, and 2005 does not support much of that standard's features - even 2008 is mostly incomplete in this regard, so it's likely we'd be migrating to Visual Studio 2010 once this adoption is made final.
One problem I know this creates, and the main reason for this thread, is that Visual Studio 2005 is currently used by Gez to create the SVN revisions. My main question is if it will be possible to continue having the SVN builds put up if support for this compiler is dropped.

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You could add support for mingw-w64 (http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net/), that way you can build for both Win32 and Win64 systems.

As usual if you do decide to target 98, you won't be able to use any functions that came after it (since _WINVER checks never define them).

EDIT: Compared to mingw, mingw-w64 supports:

* Unicode
* Win64
* mingw-w64 comes with GCC, that is it is developed under GCC's trunk rather than a set of patches (like mingw). So this means you can get G++'s new C++ support and such.
* Better support upstream if you have any questions.

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GhostlyDeath said:

You could add support for mingw-w64 (http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net/), that way you can build for both Win32 and Win64 systems.

As usual if you do decide to target 98, you won't be able to use any functions that came after it (since _WINVER checks never define them).

EDIT: Compared to mingw, mingw-w64 supports:

* Unicode
* Win64
* mingw-w64 comes with GCC, that is it is developed under GCC's trunk rather than a set of patches (like mingw). So this means you can get G++'s new C++ support and such.
* Better support upstream if you have any questions.

Page says:

mingw-w64 supports Windows OSes starting from Windows 2000 onwards. 

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Quasar said:

Page says:

mingw-w64 supports Windows OSes starting from Windows 2000 onwards. 


hmm forgot about that part, sorry!

However, there does exist http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/ which can run 2k/XP apps on 98.

Windows 98 is pretty old, even though I have two computers running 98 I don't boot them much (since I moved and they are currently wrapped in plastic anyway). What are the current reasons for keeping 98 support in despite my cries to keep it still supported? Pretty much the only people still running 98 today are dedicated fanboys, old people, collection hobbyists, nostalgic people, etc.

For my port, I support DOS which is even older but that is a separate port. However, there does exist FreeDOS which is one reason to keep it maintained.

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I'm not especially eager to install VS 2010 since it requires to register on the MS live stuff, which always rubs me the wrong way. (Whereas 2005 and 2008 do not, if you download the CD ISO and run the installer from that, instead of the Internet-based installer.)

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GhostlyDeath said:

However, there does exist http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/ which can run 2k/XP apps on 98.

Not sure if that means it'll run EE if it's compiled with VC2008 or not; it might if the minimum OS version field in the PE header is changed to 4, unless KernelEx takes care of that for you (I've never heard that it does, but it seems like it would not be nearly as useful as it is if it doesn't).

GhostlyDeath said:

Windows 98 is pretty old, even though I have two computers running 98 I don't boot them much (since I moved and they are currently wrapped in plastic anyway). What are the current reasons for keeping 98 support in despite my cries to keep it still supported? Pretty much the only people still running 98 today are dedicated fanboys, old people, collection hobbyists, nostalgic people, etc.

The only reason has been because it's been possible with a minimum amount of effort and has so far not involved holding back the project's development. As the last compilers that support the platform are now woefully out of date, that has changed. It's surprising to me somewhat that at least one variant of Windows GCC hasn't made a point of continuing to support the earlier versions. Last time CSonicGo tried one that claimed to do so, it wouldn't work as advertised.

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Gez said:

I'm not especially eager to install VS 2010 since it requires to register on the MS live stuff, which always rubs me the wrong way. (Whereas 2005 and 2008 do not, if you download the CD ISO and run the installer from that, instead of the Internet-based installer.)

We can cross the 2010 bridge when the time comes :P But I assume you're ok with 2008 being required, then?

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Note: I've changed my mind for the time being as creating the 2005 project for the dependency in question turned out to be easier than I anticipated. So for now no changes should be necessary.

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