[Graham Bloice <graham.bloice@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 8 August 2014 03:46, Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Aug 7, 2014, at 7:30 PM, Gerald Combs <gerald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 8/7/14, 6:41 PM, Guy Harris wrote:
>

>> Does that - and the use of a PowerShell command in the Makefile.nmake for building an NSIS package - make PowerShell a requirement for Windows builds?
>
> Yes.
>
>> If so, then does it come with all versions of Windows on which we support building, or does it have to be downloaded and installed on any of them?
>
> It's a separate install for Windows Vista. Windows 7 ships with
> PowerShell 2.0 and Windows 8 ships with 3.0. I'm not sure how many
> developers are running Vista or (or XP) but we should list it as a
> requirement.

And perhaps indicate, in the developer's guide, how to install it on Vista.

> Chocolatey and NuGet both require PowerShell 2.0. I can't tell if it's
> required by newer versions of Visual Studio.

So presumably that means that you need to install 2.0 on Vista.

PS scripts can indicate via a keyword (#Requires) which version of PS they require, we should make sure we set that in our scripts.

Apart from PowerShell, there are also limitations on the toolchain, e.g. VS2013 isn't supported on Vista and we're aiming to make that the "favoured" toolchain post 1.12.

As Gerald says, I'm not sure how many devs are building on Vista and while we're not (currently) aiming to cast them adrift, they should think about a move to at least Win 7.

I think those building on XP should look to move right now, the clock is definitely into overtime.

--

Graham Bloice