Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Running away from, while still being nice to, XP

From: Pascal Quantin <pascal.quantin@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2014 18:19:14 +0200
2014-04-04 19:03 GMT+02:00 Gerald Combs <gerald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
I'd like to upgrade our 32-bit Windows buildbot from XP to 8.1 in the
near future. Aside from the obvious EOL issue it's difficult to use
automated management and packaging tools like Puppet and Chocolatey
under XP. Upgrading would also let us build releases using Visual C++
2012 and later, assuming we set up XP targeting correctly[1].

However, we still have lots of users on XP and need to make sure we
remain compatible for the time being. Is there a way to test an
application for XP compatibility without actually running it under XP?
Ideally it would be something that we could add to the automated build
system.

[1]http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2012/10/08/windows-xp-targeting-with-c-in-visual-studio-2012.aspx

Hi Gerald,

I do not know how Windows compatibility mode works exactly, but running Wireshark 32 bits in Windows XP compatibility mode on Windows 7 64bits with my patch for GnuTLS 3.1.22 /Gcrypt 1.6.0 applied does not detect the MSVCRT.dll missing symbol I talked about in http://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/201404/msg00001.html.
So I fear there is no reliable way to ensure Windows XP compatibility without running tests on a Windows XP machine.

Pascal.