REPLY: 1:104/117 63e260a6   
   MSGID: 3:633/267 63e2abf5   
   CHRS: LATIN-1 2   
   TZUTC: 1100   
   TID: hpt/fbsd 1.9.0-cur 2021-04-15   
   On 2023-02-07 07:22:08, Vitaliy Aksyonov (1:104/117) wrote to andrew clarke:   
      
    ac>> From memory the very recent versions of MSVC no longer produce   
    ac>> binaries that will run under Windows XP. I've found a good "middle   
    ac>> ground" is something like Visual Studio 2012, which still runs well   
    ac>> under Windows 10 & 11.   
      
    VA> Visual Studio 2012 is not available anymore. Oldest one is 2013. Would   
    VA> it produce binaries for Windows XP?   
      
   I'm not sure, but if your C++ code builds with a modern version of MSVC then   
   it will probably build with VS2012, so anyone with that compiler should still   
   be able to build a version that will run in XP unless you're using a new C++   
   feature from C++11 or C++20 that VS2012 doesn't support.   
      
   But for GoldED it shouldn't really be necessary to refactor the code using   
   C++'s increasingly estoric features. Instead, just using features from the STL   
   would be a big improvement.   
      
    ac>> OTOH it would be preferable if a free compiler could be used in   
    ac>> Windows. Recently I learned that in 2020 Embarcadero released a   
    ac>> fork of Dev-C++ that provides GCC 9.2 and supports C++11:   
      
    VA> MS provides free VS community edition. I don't see any reasons why can't   
    VA> it be used.   
      
   I'd forgotten about the community edition.   
      
   I suppose you could use that, though the modern versions of VS are kind of   
   scary. I mean a 10+ GB download just to compile "Hello world" in C is a bit   
   excessive. The download is bigger than any regular Linux distro. Just for the   
   IDE and C/C++ compiler.   
      
   It's strange Microsoft never released a free version of MSVC with just the   
   compiler, header files and libraries but without the IDE. Borland did that in   
   2000, 23 years ago! I think it even had STL support.   
      
    ac>> I was going to suggest DOS/DPMI support should be dropped, but I   
    ac>> see GCC 10.2.0 was ported to DJGPP in 2020, so that's probably   
    ac>> useable. Though I doubt many people would complain if DOS support   
    ac>> was removed from future GoldED versions.   
      
    VA> That's a good question. Main concern here is that FidoNet is mostly   
    VA> retro hobby and people may want to run it on old computers and old OSes.   
      
   Well they can still run the older retro versions.   
      
   The question really comes down to whether you and other devs are hamstrung by   
   having to still support DOS. Of course if it turns out to be easy to keep   
   supporting it, eg. by cross-compiling with OpenWatcom, then that's good news.   
      
    ac>> Another option for Windows, OS/2 & DOS may be to build with a   
    ac>> recent version of OpenWatcom 2.0, though I don't know how well it   
    ac>> supports STL or C++11. It may be good enough. The great thing about   
    ac>> OpenWatcom 2.0 is can run under Linux, and it's also a   
    ac>> cross-compiler, so you can build DOS, Windows & OS/2 apps from   
    ac>> Linux.   
      
    VA> I like the idea of using cross-compiling. In this case there is no need   
    VA> to setup many different systems. Even if they work on virtual machine.   
      
   It does simplify things. It's also really fast.   
      
   Though another option for cross-compiling (Linux to Windows, and also MacOS to   
   Windows) is mingw-w64.   
      
    VA> From what I've read about OpenWatcom - they don't really conform fully   
    VA> to even C++98 and I'm not sure about C++11 support either. Need to try   
    VA> that.   
      
    VA> Even refactor code to use C++98 would be a huge improvement. It's full   
    VA> of old pure C approaches.   
      
   Yep, modern C/C++ in OW2.0 is a bit hit-and-miss, though there is at least   
   some STL support available, ie. strings, vectors, stacks, etc. It's worth   
   experimenting with it just to learn what its limits are, with respect to which   
   C++ features you'd like to use. It may be good enough.   
      
   --- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20230205   
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