None of the modern development tools for Windows support the
Windows 2000 platform. At present, we are jumping through hoops
to continue building OpenAFS such that it can run on Windows 2000
through Win7/2008-R2. To make this happen we must build using a
32-bit compiler not newer than Visual Studio 2005 and a SDK not
newer than version 6.0 (Vista).
This results in several negative impacts on the OpenAFS windows
development:
- In practice, the 64-bit and 32-bit openafs.org release
binaries are not built with the same tool chain
- OpenAFS is at present using compilers that are two release
cycles behind the most recent tools
- OpenAFS currently requires compilers and SDKs that are no
longer available without a Visual Studio Professional with MSDN
subscription (~US$1200/year/developer)
- Restricting feature use to the Windows 2000 platform
compatibility limits the ability to take advantage of new
features that are available only on XP and above. The most
important of which are side-by-side library assemblies.
Windows 2000 is now more than ten years old. If your organization
would be significantly impacted by removing support for Windows
2000, please let us know. My personal opinion is that it is time to
declare Windows 2000 unsupported.
Jeffrey Altman
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