[Libusbx-devel] libusbx v1.0.9-rc5 is now available

[Xiaofan Chen]

On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 10:47 PM, Pete Batard <pete at akeo.ie> wrote:
>
>> Unfortunately older Linux distributions
>> are usually not well supported to be used as a test bed
>
> Which is fine. IMO, we really have to set limits with regards to what
> we want to support and should really be looking at providing an
> official statement with regards to older stuff. We're too small a team
> to support everything users would like us to support, and we'd be
> better off clearing what is and isn't officially supported than
> finding out we're doing an half-assed job there.

I agree.

> Personally, I would really like to set a very clear and concise
> official limit, such as "Anything older than X years or no longer
> supported by the orignal manufacturer for backend Y, is not supported
> by libusbx". Else, we're going to continue carry dead weight around
> our neck and probably get into arguments of "but why are you guys
> supporting X and not Z?". For instance, if we officially support
> MSVC6, why shouldn't we support Win2k or any other technology that
> came around the same time and that is long past EOL? From a logical
> perspective, it doesn't make sense to support one and not the other.

I would set X<=10.

For Windows, maybe X=7 with XP 32bit to be the exception.

MSVC6 is really too old to be effectively supported. In fact it is not
even available from Microsoft MSDN subscriber download last time
I checked it. Same for Win2k, it is not available from MSDN Subscriber
download either, along with Win98 and WinME. For MSVC6 and Win2k,
X>10 and it is too much a hassle.

I understand Michael will object to this idea but I think he can
have his own tree for MSVC6.

For Linux, maybe X=7 is good enough. Probably same
for Mac OS X. I can only test Mac OS X Lion myself.
I am able to test Windows XP onwards and Linux
as older as Ubuntu 8.04 (2008). But I will try installing older
Debian 3.1 which was released back in 2005.

For libusb-win32, we do support Win2k since we use an older
version of WDK which is still okay for Win2k but not MSVC6.

> I think the MinGW approach is the sane one there: Concentrate on
> current platforms and, when it comes to older/EOL ones, just state
> that "if it works, great, if it doesn't you're on your own as we're
> busy enough trying to support current ones".
>

I agree.


-- 
Xiaofan