Topic: Making builds XP compatible (simple)

[DR_LaRRY_PEpPeR]

Hi Steffen, all,

Newly registered here after meaning to for a long time (mostly about myself providing PHP releases that work on XP!).

First I also wanted to point out about the Apache builds here with the "latest" Visual Studio versions... I had been using 2.2 since several years ago, and last year when I finally wanted to grab the latest from here, I figured I was out of luck on XP unless I used the VC10 builds, or built Apache myself with changes as needed for PHP.

BUT! After my experience with PHP stuff, I tried the simplest thing first with the VC11 builds (then, and now VC14 recently). I was pleasantly surprised that everything seems to work fine on XP (I just have a basic setup and haven't tried anything "exotic").

So Apache (+ stuff) isn't actually using anything from newer Windows versions (the loader doesn't complain with any DLLs I tried), unlike what it suggests on the Download pages. And the latest VC++ runtime still works on XP, even if it can use newer editions' "internal features" (*shrug*).

And what does "makes more use of modern processors" mean...? Not compiled with /arch:AVX[2] right? Again, not related to XP anyway.


Anyway, the simple fix to allow XP is setting the proper version header thing on the EXEs. It just changes 1 byte I think. I used editbin with /SUBSYSTEM:Console,5.01 on the downloads.

So all that needs to be done to save that step after-the-fact is adding the linker flag /SUBSYSTEM:Console,5.01 to your build process! (I've never compiled Apache, so don't know anything about it.)

That only matters on the executables themselves, since the loader doesn't seem to check what version DLLs indicate.


Thoughts? Or are there other reasons you want to prevent XP by default?

[James Blond]

Is there any test download? I'd like to test that on my XP VM.

[DR_LaRRY_PEpPeR]

If by "that," you mean ready-to-use XP-compatible binaries, I can modify the latest build from here later and upload it for you/anyone.

But if you mean making them compatible yourself, it just takes a few seconds with editbin like I said. (Not sure if it's available [easily] outside of the Visual Studio installation...)

[James Blond]

I have VS installed. AFAIK I would need editbin for every file including the dll's and so files.

I wonder why you needed that. XP and 2003 (/R2)are way outdated.

[glsmith]

VC 11-14 can be set to compile for XP, and VC14 came out a year after XP went EOL. I suppose even MS realized not everyone would march to the beat of their upgrade drum.

[Kanashii]

Hello again

XP is dead but has small footprint, mem, no need superhiper GPU etc so its preaty amazing for VM

So i think PHP7 + XP is a good combination

[glsmith]

Technically speaking, Windows XP is not quite dead. XP Embeded goes EOL soon on 1/12/2016.

[Kanashii]

Yes but I don;t mind you can still use some anti-rootkin protection like "Malwarebyte anti-exploit" run as user and harden it.

[Kanashii]

pathed by:
editbin.exe php.exe /SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE,5.01 /OSVERSION:5.1

Edit link and link.exe is part of visual studio e.g 2008

__

Some error on my XP:

the procedure entry point inet-pton could not be ocated in the dynamic link library WS2_32.dll

WS2_32.dll is located in system32:
5.1.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-0852)

So i think we need compile PHP with this options:

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/e40465f2-41b7-4243-ad33-15ae9366f4e6/winsock2-error-the-procedure-entry-point-xxxx-cold-not-be-located-in-ws232dll?forum=vcgeneral