I am using Visual Studio 15 2017 with the v141_xp toolset to compile a Win32 app for Windows XP. The app will run fine on both Windows 10 and XP, but running some Windows API commands like _chdir and _mkdir (or CreateDirectory) don't seem to work right: The directory is not created or, in the case of _chdir the application doesn't change its working directory.
I thought the issue was paths with spaces in the name, but I'm not entirely sure this is the case. I properly use \\ and "\"" in strings where needed, but when manipulating paths like this, it seems to either work in XP, but not 10, or it works in 10, but not XP.
I wish the code to work properly on both. Are there other compatibility issues that I'm missing?
Thanks.
More Info
I am compiling with /MTd 'Mult-threaded Debug' because of portability requirements. It's looking like this may be some issue with CRT being compiled in.
It turns out that the bug was with stat and described here a little more here:
Visual C++ 2015 express: _stat not working on Windows XP
My application was using this existence test for a file or directory, which has been a convenient cross-platform solution for many years:
return (stat(path.c_str(), &st) == 0);
But if you are compiling for Windows XP using a newer toolset, stat is now broken and you have to use the Windows API like:
return (GetFileAttributes(path.c_str()) != INVALID_FILE_ATTRIBUTES);
Related
I have an application written in C++ that uses socket (Winsock2.h). It has been developed on Windows 10 and it builds and runs fine on Windows 10. There is an old XP machine on which that application has to run (the machine cannot be upgraded as it contains legacy code that does not run on newer systems), but when I try to run the application on it I get the error: "The procedure entry point WSAPoll could not be located in the dynamic link library WS2_32.dll".
I tried the following:
I downloaded Visual Studio Express 2010 on a XP box and tried to build the application on it:
The code does not compile, because it uses libpqxx library (I suspect that libpqxx uses some c++11 code, that is not fully supported by VS2010);
I downloaded the XP toolset (v141_xp) for Visual Studio 2017 and built the application on Windows 10 (I have also downloaded and installed on XP the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2017);
I got the same "The procedure entry point WSAPoll could not be located in the dynamic link library WS2_32.dll" error.
I tried to use winsock.h and link the application to wsock32.lib:
I got the same entry point error on WS2_32.lib (probably VS links the application to WS2_32.lib even if I specified to use wsock32.liB).
Is there a way to build on VS2017 using the xp toolset an application that uses Ws2_32.lib targeting XP?
EDIT 2019-05-03 10:30
As noticed by cprogrammer and Remy Lebeau WSAPoll does not exist in XP. The point is that I do not use WSAPoll in my code. So I followed the suggestion of Retired Ninja and I wrote from scratch an application using WinSock2 starting from the very basic and adding functions step by step(*). Well, all of my code worked well. The point is that I included also another library - libpqxx - and probably it uses WSAPoll.
Ok, I still have a problem, but at least I know where it is
(*) By the way, I already tried the same in the part of my code that uses WS2_32.lib, but as the problem was in another library I still got the error, so the suggestion to start from scratch really helped.
Accortding to docs, for WSAPoll, the minimum supported client is Windows 8.1, Windows Vista [desktop apps | UWP apps]
Cannot be used for applications targeting Windows XP.
Your app (or one of its dependancies) is static linking to WSAPoll(), which simply does not exist on XP, it was introduced in Vista. Whatever code your app uses that utilizes WSAPoll() will have to be rewritten for XP. For instance, by using GetProcAddress() to access WSAPoll() dynamically instead of statically, and using a fallback (select(), WSAAsyncSelect(), WSAEventSelect(), etc) when WSAPoll() is not available.
Actually, the code should be rewritten - period, since WSAPoll() is broken and even Microsoft has gone on record saying that WSAPoll() will not be fixed and should not be used.
I'm using visual studio 2013 and compile something to run it on windows XP. It runs fine on my windows 10 machine but when i start under XP i get the error:
the procedure entry point "SHGetKnownFolderPath" could not be located in the dynamic link library shell32.dll
The options in my vs-project are set to XP variant (v120_XP). I also tried to set _WIN32_WINNT (and other defines i found on the internet) to XP define variants (e.g. _WIN32_WINNT=0x0501) without success.
I'm using some libraries which are all compiled unsing v120_XP (e.g boost).
Any advice is welcome to get my project running on windows xp.
UPDATE:
Sorry my fault. Even all libraries were forced not to use anything what is not provided by XP i missed one library which was not compiled by myself is using SHGetKnownFolderPath. I found it by dumpbin-ing all libraries. it was SimConnect.lib, used for Prepar3D. Later i found:
Prepar3D v2 is not
compatible with Windows XP and is not recommended on Windows Vista.
SHGetKnownFolderPath does not exist in XP, it's only available in Vista and above.
I have a C++ application, which is built on Windows 7 using VS 2010 IDE against VS2008 toolset. I have verified that it depends on msvc*90.dll.
The problem occurs when i move it to XP professional SP3 machine. I have installed the 32-bit vs 2008 redistributable package too.
However, the application fails to run. No error is reported. Nothing is logged into system even viewer as well.
Any hints?
PS: I have seen the following threads already.
Program Built on Win7 won't run on WinXP
How do I compile for windows XP under windows 7 / visual studio 2008
Have you checked the DLL in that Windows XP system with Dependency Walker. This may help you find if you are not missing another dependency or not dealing with side by side execution problems.
This issue is resolved now. The problem was not related to dependencies. Instead, it was some directory not existing in the file system.
I compile my C++ source code with Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview. I statically link to the runtime library.
The resulting executable cannot be executed on Windows XP. When I try to execute it on Windows XP I get the error message "[Executable Path] is not a valid Win32 Application.".
According to Microsoft Visual Studio 11 won't support Windows XP.
How does it work that the resulting executable cannot be executed on Windows XP? Is there anything special within the executable?
They seem to drop support for older systems in every new release of VS (NT4,2000,XP) Even if you don't use the CRT at all, they still force the PE subsystem version to high numbers. You can work around that by changing the numbers back to 5.0 in a post build step. Just changing those numbers should allow the exe to start on XP unless the new CRT is using WinAPI functions that don't exist on XP.
The other alternative if you want to keep using VS11 is to use multi-targeting and older compilers...
Visual Studio 2012 will be able to target Windows XP later in 2012:
Targeting Windows XP with C++ in Visual Studio 2012
"Later this fall, Microsoft will provide an update to Visual Studio 2012 that will enable C++ applications to target Windows XP. This update will make the necessary modifications to the Visual C++ 2012 compiler, runtime, and libraries to enable developers to create applications and DLLs that run on Windows XP and higher versions as well as Windows Server 2003 and higher."
Edit: This has now happened (phew!)
The workaround is to use a different Platform Toolset, which will link a different version of CRT and produce binaries compatible to older operating systems.
See more here: Target Windows XP in Visual Studio 11 Beta using the Visual Studio 2010 compiler and libraries.
With v90 toolset your binary will be able to run even in older systems, such as Windows 2000.
http://blogs.msdn.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-65-69/7444.BlogPic.png
The runtime libraries bundled with VS 2010 and higher enforce your executable to import two new functions from kernel32.dll that are missing on Windows XP: EncodePointer and DecodePointer. Those are needed for yet another idiotic naive attempt to enhance the software "security".
In VS 2010 there is an option to use the runtime libraries of Visual Studio 2008, which solves this problem. I don't know if there's such an option in later versions of VS.
I compile my C++ source code with Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview. I statically link to the runtime library.
The resulting executable cannot be executed on Windows XP. When I try to execute it on Windows XP I get the error message "[Executable Path] is not a valid Win32 Application.".
According to Microsoft Visual Studio 11 won't support Windows XP.
How does it work that the resulting executable cannot be executed on Windows XP? Is there anything special within the executable?
They seem to drop support for older systems in every new release of VS (NT4,2000,XP) Even if you don't use the CRT at all, they still force the PE subsystem version to high numbers. You can work around that by changing the numbers back to 5.0 in a post build step. Just changing those numbers should allow the exe to start on XP unless the new CRT is using WinAPI functions that don't exist on XP.
The other alternative if you want to keep using VS11 is to use multi-targeting and older compilers...
Visual Studio 2012 will be able to target Windows XP later in 2012:
Targeting Windows XP with C++ in Visual Studio 2012
"Later this fall, Microsoft will provide an update to Visual Studio 2012 that will enable C++ applications to target Windows XP. This update will make the necessary modifications to the Visual C++ 2012 compiler, runtime, and libraries to enable developers to create applications and DLLs that run on Windows XP and higher versions as well as Windows Server 2003 and higher."
Edit: This has now happened (phew!)
The workaround is to use a different Platform Toolset, which will link a different version of CRT and produce binaries compatible to older operating systems.
See more here: Target Windows XP in Visual Studio 11 Beta using the Visual Studio 2010 compiler and libraries.
With v90 toolset your binary will be able to run even in older systems, such as Windows 2000.
http://blogs.msdn.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-65-69/7444.BlogPic.png
The runtime libraries bundled with VS 2010 and higher enforce your executable to import two new functions from kernel32.dll that are missing on Windows XP: EncodePointer and DecodePointer. Those are needed for yet another idiotic naive attempt to enhance the software "security".
In VS 2010 there is an option to use the runtime libraries of Visual Studio 2008, which solves this problem. I don't know if there's such an option in later versions of VS.