Re: Compilers, SDK support roadmap

I'm in favor of this approach.

Rob

Pierre Joye wrote:
> 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