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Unofficial "Tier 4" Rust Target for older Windows versions

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Re: Unofficial "Tier 4" Rust Target for older Windows versions

#51

Post by amiga386 »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #27
dijit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be glib, but medical equipment in the first world is the same.

Surely it uses MSVCRT though.

I can't speak for medical equipment, but lab equipment in testing labs (including the ones in hospitals) needs to be calibrated correctly and run exactly to the vendor's specifications. They will continue to sign off on old hardware they continue to support, even if it's actually a Pentium 3 running Windows 95 with the expensive lab device attached via the parallel port.

If you try and switch out the host computer to something newer, the software may or may not work, but you will definitely fail your audits for changing software without the vendor's approval.

For their part, the vendor supports you buying the new version of their device for a few million quid and it now runs via USB attached to a Windows 10 computer running their proprietary software.

Re: Unofficial "Tier 4" Rust Target for older Windows versions

#52

Post by TylerE »

duskdozer wrote: post #35
Fulgen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, as usual, that some people want that support, but nobody is actually interested in helping out with that support - and that doesn't only include people willing to help out with the code, it includes things like CI. Just how the riscv targets won't be able to reach tier 1 without GH or someone else offering CI support. Rust's target tiers, while historically not as enforced as they are today, have requ…

I do wonder how much support is removed because of genuine maintenance or compatibility burden, because I've encountered enough examples where it was done solely because some target was deemed "too old" arbitrarily, even if it would still work without any modifications.

Perhaps the best example I can think of is the whole situation

InstallShield is....massive crapware and actually generated 16 bit installers way way after anyone was using 16bit PCs. Nobody notices until, I think it was W8 or W10 dropped support for running 16bit executables (something about dropping the subsystem that supported them.

Re: Unofficial "Tier 4" Rust Target for older Windows versions

#53

Post by dwattttt »

amiga386 wrote: post #51
inferiorhuman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it uses MSVCRT though.

I can't speak for medical equipment, but lab equipment in testing labs (including the ones in hospitals) needs to be calibrated correctly and run exactly to the vendor's specifications. They will continue to sign off on old hardware they continue to support, even if it's actually a Pentium 3 running Windows 95 with the expensive lab device attached via the parallel port. If you try and switch out the host computer to…

Since it took me a minute to realise... glib vs MSVCRT are the keywords to the joke.

Re: Unofficial "Tier 4" Rust Target for older Windows versions

#54

Post by dwattttt »

duskdozer wrote: post #38
carstenhag wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate my bakery, the buns are only edible for some days, after that, they grow mold! Without sarcasm, it is entirely reasonable that when the OS is EOL by the 1st party, software support for it by 3rd party also ends soon after that.

I think it's more like your gen1 wi-fi enabled Philips screwdriver stops working because it's EOL as opposed to because nobody uses Philps screws anymore. Sometimes it's the latter, but not always.

A more direct analogy is right there; your Phillips head screws cam out more easily than Torx. Everyone who wants screws that don't shred as easily moves to that weird 6 pointed star pattern, and your Phillips head screwdrivers are suddenly EOL'd.

Re: Unofficial "Tier 4" Rust Target for older Windows versions

#55

Post by dtech »

TylerE wrote: post #52
duskdozer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder how much support is removed because of genuine maintenance or compatibility burden, because I've encountered enough examples where it was done solely because some target was deemed "too old" arbitrarily, even if it would still work without any modifications.

Perhaps the best example I can think of is the whole situation InstallShield is....massive crapware and actually generated 16 bit installers way way after anyone was using 16bit PCs. Nobody notices until, I think it was W8 or W10 dropped support for running 16bit executables (something about dropping the subsystem that supported them.

It was 64-bit Windows versions, 16 bit was never supported not even on XP 64-bit. I think W8 was the first 64-bit only Windows.

Re: Unofficial "Tier 4" Rust Target for older Windows versions

#56

Post by EvanAnderson »

dtech wrote: post #55
TylerE wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the best example I can think of is the whole situation InstallShield is....massive crapware and actually generated 16 bit installers way way after anyone was using 16bit PCs. Nobody notices until, I think it was W8 or W10 dropped support for running 16bit executables (something about dropping the subsystem that supported them.

It was 64-bit Windows versions, 16 bit was never supported not even on XP 64-bit. I think W8 was the first 64-bit only Windows.

Windows 11 was the first 64-bit only build of the NT-based Windows tree. There are 32-bit x86 builds of all previous versions.

Re: Unofficial "Tier 4" Rust Target for older Windows versions

#57

Post by cwillu »

GardenLetter27 wrote: post #49
vbezhenar wrote: post #3

I wish more languages support old platforms. I'm working in a company and a lot of our customers are running Windows 7 and 8, few of them running Vista. I have to use ancient versions of development tools to target those. For example stuck on Java 8 for eternity. It's PITA.

Why? That effort is far better spent on developing new things and taking advantage of modern hardware. People need to upgrade. I'm surprised any machine running Vista could even use the modern web.

People do not, in fact, need to upgrade.

Re: Unofficial "Tier 4" Rust Target for older Windows versions

#58

Post by fredoralive »

dtech wrote: post #55
TylerE wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the best example I can think of is the whole situation InstallShield is....massive crapware and actually generated 16 bit installers way way after anyone was using 16bit PCs. Nobody notices until, I think it was W8 or W10 dropped support for running 16bit executables (something about dropping the subsystem that supported them.

It was 64-bit Windows versions, 16 bit was never supported not even on XP 64-bit. I think W8 was the first 64-bit only Windows.

Windows 11 drops IA32, and thus (first party) MS-DOS and Windows 3.x support.

Windows actually has some special cased support for (at least some of) the problematic 16 bit InstallShield installers to run a 32 bit version instead on AMD64.

Re: Unofficial "Tier 4" Rust Target for older Windows versions

#59

Post by purkka »

tcfhgj wrote: post #50
carstenhag wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate my bakery, the buns are only edible for some days, after that, they grow mold! Without sarcasm, it is entirely reasonable that when the OS is EOL by the 1st party, software support for it by 3rd party also ends soon after that.

Unlike buns, software doesn't deteriorate

It does, especially at the scale of operating systems.

Bugs and vulnerabilities are always being found, with fewer and fewer people in the pool that might even theoretically want to pay for fixing them.

Also, hardware does deteriorate, and the story is the same for adding software support for whatever is currently available in hardware.

Re: Unofficial "Tier 4" Rust Target for older Windows versions

#60

Post by vips7L »

tapete2 wrote: post #25
vips7L wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a huge Java fan, modern versions are amazing, but being stuck on 8 is the only time I’d recommend just using Kotlin or Scala and compiling to v8 byte code. 8 is just a miserable experience.

Do you happen to know some good learning resources (books, etc.) for modern Java versions? My last job used Java 8 exclusively and it was indeed a miserable experience, but I am contemplating using modern java for my next project.

This is unpublished still but is worth checking out: https://www.manning.com/books/data-oriented-programming-in-j...

Other than that, I think we’re all waiting for Josh Bloch to put out Effective Java 4th edition.

The main benefits of the post-8 world that I would look into learning are: pattern matching and destructuring, sealed (sum) types, records, and switch expressions.

In the library/framework space I think learning about quarkus, microprofile, and jakarta data would be valuable. It’s looking like that’s the future of Java on the server.

Less important things to learn about would probably be runtime changes like virtual threads, ZGC, or the AOT cache stuff coming out of project Leyden. Long term things to keep an eye on are value classes if we ever get them.

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