I propose that FFmpeg sets the minimum supported Windows version to Windows Vista (or maybe Windows 7). This would remove Windows XP support.
The reason is that Windows XP does not provide certain convenient APIs, in particular locking primitives that map well to pthread. There are other problems, such as upstream projects dropping XP support, and developers not being able to test. Dropping it has advantages for us. For example, it would allow is to rewrite the messy locking code for AVCodec registration, which has been a topic recently. Microsoft ended all support for Windows XP on January 31, 2009. That's almost a decade ago. There is a lack of security updates, which makes merely using Windows XP dangerous. There is no reason to put so much effort into supporting an old, unsupported OS. We should drop XP support, and allow unconditional use of Windows Vista APIs. I'm also casting an internal vote to probe for support (this vote is meant for members of the FFmpeg voting committee only). The subject of the vote is: Should we drop support for Windows XP starting in git master and the next FFmpeg major release? Current release branches are explicitly unaffected. My own vote on this issue is "yes" (assuming I still have a right for a vote, I really don't know). _______________________________________________ ffmpeg-devel mailing list ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org http://ffmpeg.org/mailman/listinfo/ffmpeg-devel
