[gs-devel] Windows 95 and Visual Studio 2005

[Russell Lang]

It has been reported that Ghostscript 8.61 will not run on Windows 95
  http://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=689689
This is because it was compiled with Visual Studio 2005, which does not support 
Windows 95.

What is the preferred solution to this?
1. Continue to use Visual Studio 2005, and document that Ghostscript does not 
work on Windows 95.
2. Use Visual Studio 2003 for release builds.

Which compilers does Artifex plan to support for the next few releases?



Explanation: The Visual Studio 2005 C RTL uses the API IsDebuggerPresent() 
from KERNEL32.DLL, but this was introduced after Windows 95, and so 
anything will compiled with VS 2005 will fail to run on Windows 95.  The 
workarounds are to use an older compiler (VS 2003 or earlier), or to copy two 
source files from the C RTL and to include modified versions in ghostscript 
(unacceptable due to copyright).

On a related topic, at this stage it is possible to compile for 64-bit Windows with 
Visual Studio 2003 and 2005.  These both use the cross compiler, since this is 
the only method that works with VS2003.  At the time the 64-bit build was added, 
only VS2003 was suitable for release builds.  VS2005 was still in beta and not 
licensed for release code.  I plan to remove the VS2003 64-bit support, and 
change it so that only VS2005 and VS2008 work, using native compilation 
instead of cross compilation, which should make the makefile less messy.

Russell Lang                   gsview at ghostgum.com.au
Ghostgum Software Pty Ltd      http://www.ghostgum.com.au/