Re: [PATCH] docs/about: Update the support statement for Windows

[Thomas Huth]

On 05/05/2022 13.55, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> On Thu, May 05, 2022 at 09:14:57AM +0100, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> > On Thu, May 05, 2022 at 09:48:41AM +0200, Thomas Huth wrote:
> > > Our support statement for Windows currently talks about "Vista / Server
> > > 2008" - which is related to the API of Windows, and this is not easy
> > > to understand for the non-technical users. It might also not be quite
> > > true anymore, since we only compile-test QEMU with recent toolchains.
> >
> > We documented Vista / Server 2008 because that is what our code is
> > declaring it wants in terms of Windows public APIs:
> >
> > In osdep.h we have:
> >
> >    #ifdef _WIN32
> >    /* as defined in sdkddkver.h */
> >    #ifndef _WIN32_WINNT
> >    #define _WIN32_WINNT 0x0600 /* Vista */
> >    #endif
> >
> > which tells Mingw / MSys not to expose windows header file declarations
> > that post-date Vista.
>
> Of course we rely on 3rd party libraries and in particular GLib2 is
> mandatory, and it also set _WIN32_WINNT. So our constraint is the
> newer of the _WIN32_WINNT constraint set by QEMU and whatever version
> of GLib2 being compiled against.
>
> QEMU sets a min GLib of 2.56, and that version of GLib sets 0x0601
> which means Windows >= 7.  So even though QEMU only asks for Vista,
> in practice our minimum is 7.

Windows 7 does not receive any security updates since 2020 anymore, so I'd 
rather would bump it to the level of Windows 8.1 directly instead. Or 
directly go for Windows 10 to mimic the behavior that we have with most of 
the Linux distros (max. two major releases at a time).

 Thomas