On 17.10.2011 20:24, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
There is code in druntime and Phobos which special-cases for Windows 98 and earlier (e.g. std.file using the A functions instead of the W functions if the version of Windows that you're running on is too old to have the W functions). Now, personally, I would love it if we just said that you have to have at least Win2k if not WinXP. It would be_great_ to be able to assume at least Vista, since it added a number of useful functions, but XP is still too prevalent for that to be reasonable. Regardless, supporting older versions of Windows is just plain irritating, since it restricts what you can do, and D is new enough and Win2k old enough that I find it perfectly reasonable to insist that you have WinXP or newer, but that's not what we're doing at this point.
I'm not even sure W2K support is in great demand. Even XP is on a strong downwards slope, and Win7 has a greater share of the market now. XP is still needed for several years, but Win98...? When was the last time anyone encountered Win98? Does anyone even make software with Win98 support anymore? I doubt D looses any market share by ditching support for operating systems that doesn't even have vendor support. If it restricts usage on newer operating systems I'm in favor of dropping it, but I guess there's a good reason why Win98 is supported (or just legacy from 10 years back..?)
