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Drop support of Windows Vista and Windows 7 #76773
Description
Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.
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GitHub fields:
assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2022-03-21.20:38:56.872>
created_at = <Date 2018-01-18.09:37:18.007>
labels = ['type-feature', '3.10', 'OS-windows']
title = 'Drop support of Windows Vista and Windows 7'
updated_at = <Date 2022-03-21.20:38:56.871>
user = 'https://github.com/vstinner'bugs.python.org fields:
activity = <Date 2022-03-21.20:38:56.871>
actor = 'steve.dower'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2022-03-21.20:38:56.872>
closer = 'steve.dower'
components = ['Windows']
creation = <Date 2018-01-18.09:37:18.007>
creator = 'vstinner'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 32592
keywords = ['patch']
message_count = 44.0
messages = ['310227', '310233', '310234', '310296', '310297', '310303', '310308', '318103', '333160', '333161', '333186', '333187', '341393', '341534', '341535', '341612', '342041', '351882', '351965', '352476', '352502', '353307', '353308', '353312', '353328', '363348', '363352', '363356', '364793', '364798', '364899', '388700', '388703', '388705', '389225', '389377', '389378', '389385', '389398', '389413', '389445', '389449', '389460', '389476']
nosy_count = 15.0
nosy_names = ['terry.reedy', 'paul.moore', 'pitrou', 'tim.golden', 'lukasz.langa', 'python-dev', 'zach.ware', 'eryksun', 'steve.dower', 'izbyshev', 'ZackerySpytz', 'CAM-Gerlach', 'kj', 'DMI-1407', 'veso266']
pr_nums = ['5231', '11457', '11457', '11457', '15951', '22586', '26429']
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue32592'
versions = ['Python 3.10']
Activity
vstinner commentedon Jan 18, 2018
https://docs.python.org/dev/using/windows.html#supported-versions
"As specified in PEP-11, a Python release only supports a Windows platform while Microsoft considers the platform under extended support. This means that Python 3.7 supports Windows Vista and newer. If you require Windows XP support then please install Python 3.4."
But Windows Vista extended supported already ended last year, in April 2017.
Attached PR removes code to support Windows Vista.
zooba commentedon Jan 18, 2018
The only changes necessary in the installer should be in PythonBootstrapperApplication.cpp to make it an error when run on pre-Win7 OS. The pattern is already there, and the string references are in Tools/msi/bundle/Default.wxl
If you don't get to it, reassign the bug to me once you've merged the first part and I'll look at the installer.
vstinner commentedon Jan 18, 2018
I like that :-) Will me. Right now, my PR doesn't compile, I broke something and I don't understand the error.
terryjreedy commentedon Jan 19, 2018
I believe that PEP-11 originally said, or should have said "3.6 supports Windows Vista and newer." I believe 3.5 supports XP, so it should be "please install Python 3.5".
zware commentedon Jan 19, 2018
3.4 was the last version to support XP.
vstinner commentedon Jan 19, 2018
Terry: see my notes about platforms suported by Python.
http://vstinner.readthedocs.io/cpython.html#supported-platforms
The PEP-11 doesn't want to have an explicit list of supported Windows versions, but I'm unable to *guess* which Windows version is supported by which Python version, so I wrote my own doc...
terryjreedy commentedon Jan 20, 2018
I personally think it was a mistake to stop being explicit about Windows support in PEP-11. The rationale was to avoid having to update it. But it is updated for other systems; an explicit list is needed somewhere (as illustrated by my memory lapse; and PEP-11 is the most obvious and discoverable place.
vstinner commentedon May 29, 2018
I failed to fix failures on my PR. It's now too late for Python 3.7.
If someone is interested to drop Vista support from Python 3.8, I suggest to open a new issue instead.
vstinner commentedon Jan 7, 2019
Hello 2018, I reopen the issue and change the version to Python 3.8.
40 remaining items
veso266 commentedon Mar 24, 2021
not sure about the strategies here but maybe a better approach would be to kill support for unsupported version of windows in a major release
since I guess python 3 was a complete rewrite of python2 (at least the low level side I assume it was)
and it would be easier for people to remeber (eg, if I have to rewrite my app because python4 has a major language differences I might as well drop support for older OSes in it), eg, python2 works on XP, python3 works on vista and up, python4 works on windows 10
for instance, I didn't even know you can run python3 on XP, I always thought that python2.7 is the last version that would run there
and since the code to support windows 7 is still present (almost, just the installer change would need to be rolleed back and some compiler declaratives:
0b72ccf
izbyshev@6a65eba
I see no reason to touch it (it probably just stays there serving its purpose) and when python4 comes along (if its a rewrite then windows 7 hacks (would just not be written anymore)
zooba commentedon Mar 24, 2021
We do, but the "major" release is the second field of the version number (you can think of the first field as the "series" or "product" number).
Yes, this is not SemVer. Sorry. We pre-date SemVer.
Python 3.8 and earlier are just as supported for Windows 7 as our volunteers can handle, which is all that has ever been offered here. If people need better support than that, I'd suggest paying someone.
izbyshev commentedon Mar 24, 2021
That's totally fair.
I agree. In my comment, I only intended to contrast "complaining" with stepping up to do the work. I didn't mean to imply that it's inappropriate per-se.
pythongh-76773: Update docs mentioning no-longer-supported Windows ve…
pythongh-76773: Update docs mentioning no-longer-supported Windows ve…
gh-76773: Update docs mentioning no-longer-supported Windows versions…
pythongh-76773: Update docs mentioning no-longer-supported Windows ve…
CAM-Gerlach commentedon May 10, 2022
I took care of the docs changes mentioned in my comment above. Aside from the installer updates and the other breaking security change, have any of the code changes cleanups mentioned in my other comment or discussed further above been made? If so, are they still work making for 3.12?
[3.10] gh-76773: Update docs mentioning no-longer-supported Windows v…
[3.9] gh-76773: Update docs mentioning no-longer-supported Windows ve…
[3.11] gh-76773: Update docs mentioning no-longer-supported Windows v…
[3.9] pythongh-76773: Update docs mentioning no-longer-supported Wind…
CAM-Gerlach commentedon Sep 23, 2022
Just for posterity, since I couldn't find it mentioned anywhere here for some reason, it was PR #21656 that actually dropped support for Windows <8.1 in the installer.