[Development] Proposal: New list of Qt 5 reference / Tier 1 platforms

[BRM]

> From: "shane.kearns at accenture.com" <shane.kearns at accenture.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2012 11:12 AM
> Subject: RE: [Development] Proposal: New list of Qt 5 reference / Tier 1 platforms
>>  Win8 support would be nice to add, but please do not drop WinXP.
>>  MS may be dropping official, public support for WinXP in 2014; but it will 
>> still be around for a very long time.
> 
> Are you referring to XP for embedded? (which survives until 2016)
> I'd strongly advise anyone not to use a operating system for which there are 
> no security updates on a general purpose machine.
> While you may need to continue supporting products based on XP embedded, would 
> that include putting new releases of Qt on them?

No, I'm talking about XP, at least XP Pro. Many companies are still using it and will continue to use it.
And whether or not I like it, I'm stuck supporting it - whether MS wants to or not.

And yes, I do plan on putting new release of Qt on it - as new as I can get.
As soon as Qt5 is out and it makes sense, I'll be looking at porting everything to Qt5; but I'll still have to support XP systems since I already have a number in the field and can't simply tell them they need to upgrade the system to a newer version of Windows. (My main Windows support environment is an XP Pro Virtual Machine.)
 
> However, if & when we do decide to remove XP from the CI system it should be 
> replaced with vista (as the oldest supported windows version).
> We shouldn't test only W7 and W8.

XP will probably be around longer than Vista will be.
Not to say that Vista won't have a small market share, but it will probably be (and remain to be) negligible compared to XP and Win7.
 
> My view would be that XP should not be a tier 1 platform for new releases when 
> MS discontinues extended support.
> It should still be tested for patch releases of already released Qt versions.

Agreed at the very least; but Qt5 should officially support XP if at all possible.
XP won't have Extended Support discontinued until 2014 for starters (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?ln=en-gb&c2=1173).
 
Ben