Compilers, SDK support roadmap

Hi,

The 5.3 release period is the right time to begin a little discussion
about which compilers and SDKs we can support, officially or as
convenience.

Why change anything in this area and why it matters?

We met (and still meet) many issues in our dependencies because of
VC6. The growing users base of win64 users (be 2k3 or the fresh 2k8
x64 or Itanium) have been constantly asking for better support or
native builds. As the bleeding edges Microsoft can't be supported in
5.3, it makes possible to provide experimental releases while moving
to more recent compilers and SDKs.

Please find a little table listed all versions we use in our wiki:

http://wiki.php.net/internals/windows/compiler

http://wiki.php.net/internals/windows/windowssdk

What I would like to propose is:

* VC6
Officially supported for 5.2 and 5.3. We can then drop it for any
release after 5.3 (be 5.4 or 6.x)

*VC7/7.1
Drop it altogether and stop to provide/update the libraries in our
repository. Too much work for zero gain/users.

* VC8-x86
Officially supported for 5.3 and for 6.x (snaps for now :)

* VC8-x64
Experimental releases (not from www.php.net/downloads, other OS
specific builds will be provided like for Server 2k8) for 5.3 and
official support for the next release (be 5.4 or 6.x)

* VC9 (x86/x64)
Officially supported for 5.3 and for 6.x while keeping VC8 support

--
Pierre

http://blog.thepimp.net | http://www.libgd.org