[Privoxy-devel] Windows XP support?

[Ian Silvester]

On Fri, 14 Jan 2022, at 11:30, Lee wrote:
> On 1/12/22, Fabian Keil <fk at fabiankeil.de> wrote:
>> "Ian Silvester" <iansilvester at fastmail.fm> wrote on 2022-01-11 at 18:58:02:
>>
>>> Update - here's my proposed change for your approval prior to
>>> committing:
>>> https://silvester.org.uk/privoxy-doc-testing/faq/installation.html
>>
>> I don't quite like the wording "binaries shipped by the Privoxy project"
>> and "Project-supplied binaries" and would prefer "binaries provided
>> by members of the Privoxy team" or something similar that makes
>> it clear that the binaries are provided by individuals and not
>> the whole project.
>>
>> I'm also not so sure about mentioning old releases with known
>> security issues without warning.
>>
>> For example my recommendation for Windows XP users would be to
>> build the latest Privoxy release themselves if possible instead
>> of downloading an obsolete Privoxy version that happens to "work".
>
> I don't know if it's possible to use [what's the Microsoft C compiler
> called?] or one of the mingw projects to build Privoxy "out of the
> box" - ie. with no changes required to the source code or make files.
> I've only used cygwin to build privoxy.
>
> I just got this msg on the cygwin mailing lists today:
>   https://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin-apps/2022-January/041813.html
>
>   Show a MessageBox warning if we are running on a Windows version
>    which we have deprecated Cygwin support for:
>
>   - Windows 6.0 (Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008)
>   - 32-bit Windows
>
> So building the latest Privoxy on a no longer supported OS is going to
> be difficult.
> Not impossible.. there's a "cygwin time machine"  that allows one to
> get a version of cygwin/mingw that worked on an ancient OS. But note
>
>   https://sourceware.org/pipermail/cygwin-announce/2021-October/010271.html
>
>   - Cygwin 3.3 is the LAST major version supporting
>
>     - Windows Vista
>     - Windows Server 2008
>
>   - Cygwin 3.4, which will probably be release at some point in 2022,
>   will be the LAST version supporting
>
>     - Windows 7
>     - Windows Server 2008 R2
>     - Windows 8
>     - Windows Server 2012
>
> It's going to be increasingly difficult for someone to build Privoxy
> on an unsupported Windows OS.  I'd suggest they find a flavour of
> Linux that works on their hardware and install that on their machine.

Thanks for the info Lee - good to know where we're able to be at with your binaries.

For me, this is all the more reason for us to highlight older binaries with older OS support entirely at the consumer's risk - we know that there are folks whose security risk appetite is stronger than their ability to build code. If on the other hand someone out there finds a way to use something other than Cygwin to compile Privoxy for older Windows releases then so much the better - my FAQ update does twice suggest that that is preferable to using an older Privoxy release!

Cheers,

Ian


> Lee
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