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Date:	Thu, 05 Sep 2002 22:05:37 -0400
From:	Earnie Boyd <earnie_boyd AT yahoo DOT com>
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To:	"Gary R. Van Sickle" <g DOT r DOT vansickle AT worldnet DOT att DOT net>
CC:	cygwin-developers AT cygwin DOT com, mingw-users AT lists DOT sourceforge DOT net
Subject:	Re: WINVER constant value [WAS: GetConsoleWindow]
References:	<NCBBIHCHBLCMLBLOBONKEEMFDEAA DOT g DOT r DOT vansickle AT worldnet DOT att DOT net>

"Gary R. Van Sickle" wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Sep 05, 2002 at 08:25:44AM -0400, Earnie Boyd wrote:
> > >Well, yes, but for w32api that would not be logical.  At least this
> > >thread has pointed some doco weaknesses that I need to address.  Yes,
> > >if you want to use the newer API functions then you must be aware to
> > >set WINVER to the version you wish to support.  MS must do this for
> > >each generation of new compilers to support newer OS's.  If give the
> > >developer the freedom to not think about backward compatibility, and as
> > >evidenced there is little.  We are smarter than that, so we choose to
> > >let the developer set the version h[im|er]self, I.E.: the developer is
> > >forced to think about the new functionality w.r.t.  backward
> > >compatibility of older OS versions.
> >
> > Is this decision documented somewhere?  It doesn't make sense to me
> > that w32api would be like Microsoft in every other way but this one.
> > And, somehow, I thought that as one of the main users of w32api, we
> > might get a vote in this.
> >
> > Why throw a barrier in the way of someone who thinks that they've
> > found an alternative to MSVC?  You're guaranteeing that someone will
> > have to find the mingw mailing list and ask questions because things
> > are working differently than they expect.
> >
> 
> I gotta agree here.  All this is going to do is result in endless "Why can't
> mingw find APIOnlyInNTSeries()?  My program compiles on VC7 just fine!"'s.  That
> sounds to me to be exactly not what the whole idea of mingw is about; isn't the
> ultimate mingw ideal to be a (vastly superior) "drop-in" for MSVC++?  Personally
> I sure hope so!
> 

What do MinGW users think?  How does this affect WINE and ReactOS?

The discussion here is that WINVER is defaulted to 0x0400 and all newer
API is guarded with the appropriate version of Win32 OS in which they
appeared in the w32api, yet with MS they change the value of WINVER to
the new OS value with the new releases of their compilers.  The
beginning of the thread exists in the cygwin-developers list.

My opinion is stated it the first paragraph above.

Earnie.

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