[Development] Dropping XP?

[John Layt]

On 9 December 2013 23:23, Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira at intel.com> wrote:
> As Kenneth reminds us[1], Microsoft is ending the security updates for Windows
> XP in April 2014. That's about when we plan to release Qt 5.3.
>
> Should we stop supporting Windows XP? Is there anything we can improve in our
> codebase if we do?

I would like to, but I'm not sure we can quite yet given how
widespread its use still is.  OTOH people won't move unless the
industry gives them reason to do so by dropping support :-)

Localization would benefit, or at least would be cleaner.  Vista added
a lot of new APIs and features I'd like to use without having to fudge
things on XP, like we do in QCollator.  It would also mean the WinRT
port wouldn't need to ifdef everywhere to replace LCIDs with locale
names and the potential for behaviour differences that brings.

Printing I haven't noticed any new API at all.

If 5.3 is a stabilization release and on a shorter release cycle, and
comes out about the XP EoL date, then perhaps it would be a good final
release to offer XP users, with 5.4 giving us more time to replace XP
code and make sure there's no regressions?  Or would the WinRT port
benefit from us doing it sooner?

John.