Hi all, This is a quick discussion about the current system requirements for Windows builds. Spurred by a recent[1] LLVM discussion, I'd like to raise the question of dropping support for Windows XP, and bumping the minimum required version to Windows Vista or even Windows 7. For one, Microsoft doesn't support XP anymore, so most people are moving off it anyway. 'Soon' even XP Embedded will be obsoleted. But second, Vista and beyond introduced useful new APIs we could use. I was digging through the LLVM thread and two came out to me: 1) We could switch to using slim reader/writer locks, which in some workloads may work out better than critical sections (they'll win on more read-heavy workloads). The downsides is there's no recursive locking but we don't use that anyway (and recursive locks are considered bad by many anyway[2]). 2) We could probably use an actual condition variables API that was introduced with Vista. Currently we use a giant EVENT object to emulate the API, which could be replaced with the real deal. Both of these could be nice wins for simplicity and performance I think. I know there are some corporate users out there who this may impact, and users as well. I'd like to know what people think. Particularly what version we should standardize on. FWIW, I don't plan on changing any of this until the 7.12 release at least. [1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/78419 [2] http://www.zaval.org/resources/library/butenhof1.html -- Regards, Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/
+1. Windows XP was Microsoft's most successful OS thus far, but it's pretty
much dead now. One potentially related potential concern: how will this
change affect Wine support?
On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Austin Seipp
Hi all,
This is a quick discussion about the current system requirements for Windows builds.
Spurred by a recent[1] LLVM discussion, I'd like to raise the question of dropping support for Windows XP, and bumping the minimum required version to Windows Vista or even Windows 7.
For one, Microsoft doesn't support XP anymore, so most people are moving off it anyway. 'Soon' even XP Embedded will be obsoleted.
But second, Vista and beyond introduced useful new APIs we could use. I was digging through the LLVM thread and two came out to me:
1) We could switch to using slim reader/writer locks, which in some workloads may work out better than critical sections (they'll win on more read-heavy workloads). The downsides is there's no recursive locking but we don't use that anyway (and recursive locks are considered bad by many anyway[2]).
2) We could probably use an actual condition variables API that was introduced with Vista. Currently we use a giant EVENT object to emulate the API, which could be replaced with the real deal.
Both of these could be nice wins for simplicity and performance I think.
I know there are some corporate users out there who this may impact, and users as well. I'd like to know what people think. Particularly what version we should standardize on.
FWIW, I don't plan on changing any of this until the 7.12 release at least.
[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/78419 [2] http://www.zaval.org/resources/library/butenhof1.html
-- Regards,
Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/ _______________________________________________ Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
One concern here is that even with XP falling out of support, Windows Server 2003 remains supported through July 2015, and so we should give it a little chunk of time after that falls out of support from Microsoft before we stop supporting that. I think the limitations in Server 2003 are roughly the same as XP. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/windows-server-2003/ However, the next Windows Server (2008) should share all Vista features. Cheers, Gershom On November 7, 2014 at 1:16:39 PM, Austin Seipp (austin@well-typed.com) wrote:
Hi all,
This is a quick discussion about the current system requirements for Windows builds.
Spurred by a recent[1] LLVM discussion, I'd like to raise the question of dropping support for Windows XP, and bumping the minimum required version to Windows Vista or even Windows 7.
For one, Microsoft doesn't support XP anymore, so most people are moving off it anyway. 'Soon' even XP Embedded will be obsoleted.
But second, Vista and beyond introduced useful new APIs we could use. I was digging through the LLVM thread and two came out to me:
1) We could switch to using slim reader/writer locks, which in some workloads may work out better than critical sections (they'll win on more read-heavy workloads). The downsides is there's no recursive locking but we don't use that anyway (and recursive locks are considered bad by many anyway[2]).
2) We could probably use an actual condition variables API that was introduced with Vista. Currently we use a giant EVENT object to emulate the API, which could be replaced with the real deal.
Both of these could be nice wins for simplicity and performance I think.
I know there are some corporate users out there who this may impact, and users as well. I'd like to know what people think. Particularly what version we should standardize on.
FWIW, I don't plan on changing any of this until the 7.12 release at least.
[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/78419 [2] http://www.zaval.org/resources/library/butenhof1.html
-- Regards,
Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/ _______________________________________________ Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
Hello Austin, Friday, November 7, 2014, 9:16:22 PM, you wrote:
For one, Microsoft doesn't support XP anymore, so most people are moving off it anyway. 'Soon' even XP Embedded will be obsoleted.
at the end of http://freearc.org/Statistics.aspx page you can find stats about OS used by ysers of my program - archiver written in haskell. these are 14% of *geeks* using the l;atest alpha version (stable version of my program ddoesn't report this parameter) so dropping XP support means that newer GHC can't be used anymore to compile general-purpose programs targeting large user audience -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com
On 2014-11-13 15:25, Bulat Ziganshin wrote:
Hello Austin,
Friday, November 7, 2014, 9:16:22 PM, you wrote:
For one, Microsoft doesn't support XP anymore, so most people are moving off it anyway. 'Soon' even XP Embedded will be obsoleted.
at the end of http://freearc.org/Statistics.aspx page you can find stats about OS used by ysers of my program - archiver written in haskell. these are 14% of *geeks* using the l;atest alpha version (stable version of my program ddoesn't report this parameter)
so dropping XP support means that newer GHC can't be used anymore to compile general-purpose programs targeting large user audience
I'm not sure I understand the version numbers, but it seems 95.46% of your users a version from before June 26, 2010. How likely are they to upgrade if they haven't upgraded since 2010?
participants (5)
-
Austin Seipp -
Bardur Arantsson -
Bulat Ziganshin -
David Feuer -
Gershom B