[LLVMdev] LLVM 3.4 RC3 fails to run on Win32

[Aaron Ballman]

On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 2:59 PM, Jasper Neumann <jn at sirrida.de> wrote:
> Hello Aaron, hello all,
>
>
>> Looking at the PE32 file for it, it is a 32-bit executable. More
>> likely, the version was built using a newer visual studio (2012, or
>> 2013), but not built with XP support enabled.
>
> This is a plausible cause. Thanks for the explanation.
>
> I sincerely hope that subsequent release candidates and release versions are
> usable also on even older Windows versions such as Windows 2000.

This is not likely to happen -- Windows XP is the minimum OS we are
supporting. However, it might make sense for us to explore creating
the pre-built binaries with XP support enabled. If it proves to be
impossible (IIRC, using XP support could change the compiler features
we can use from MSVC), we should at least cause the installer to fail
on XP and lower (we should fail on Win2k and lower no matter what, but
since I don't create the installers, it's easy for me to say this).

> Similar
> things might hold for other operating systems.
> BTW: What's the point of creating a compiler but not using it? :-)
> IMHO published versions of the compiler should have been compiled with
> itself.

clang can self-host on Windows, but the linker support isn't there for
producing executables. MSVC ABI compatibility is coming along nicely,
but not to the point where we can use LINK.exe to link clang (that I'm
aware of), and lld support for PE32 files is also coming along nicely,
but not completed yet either.

~Aaron