[cfe-dev] libc++ for Windows

[David Chisnall]

On 28 Jan 2011, at 17:19, Óscar Fuentes wrote:

> Ruben Van Boxem <vanboxem.ruben at gmail.com>
> writes:
> 
>> Is it feasible/ok for libc++ to only support vista+? It seems kind of
>> logical, as that would allow focus on more important windows things
>> and when libc++ is production ready on Windows, xp will be phases out
>> imho...
> 
> You are being very pessimistic about libc++ development pace and very
> optimistic about OS replacement rate ;-)
> 
> If previous experience is worth anything, we can bet that on 2015 will
> be millions of machines running XP, both for personal use on developing
> countries and on business-related roles everywhere.

Support for any system in an open source project depends on someone being willing to either do it themselves or pay someone else to do it (the latter being the reason why Apple typically has good support from LLVM-related projects).

A number of thread-related classes (e.g. std::condition_variable) are significantly easier to implement using Vista-or-later APIs, so if I were going to implement Windows versions of them (I won't be - I don't have a Windows machine anymore) I'd be inclined not to bother supporting XP.

If someone wants to write a version that works with Windows XP, then I doubt anyone would object to it, but I suspect that code that exists and requires Vista will be more popular than code that doesn't exist and supports XP / 2K.

Another option is to use mingw-pthreads for XP and provide a native version for Vista+.

David

-- Send from my Jacquard Loom