Comment by duskdozer
8 hours ago
I do wonder how much support is removed because of genuine maintenance or compatibility burden, because I've encountered enough examples where it was done solely because some target was deemed "too old" arbitrarily, even if it would still work without any modifications.
> even if it would still work without any modifications
even in this case, maintenance burden is still real. supporting the old target often prevents you from using features/tools that make maintenance easier
Perhaps the best example I can think of is the whole situation
InstallShield is....massive crapware and actually generated 16 bit installers way way after anyone was using 16bit PCs. Nobody notices until, I think it was W8 or W10 dropped support for running 16bit executables (something about dropping the subsystem that supported them.
Nobody noticed because Windows special cased InstallShield.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20131031-00/?p=27...
It was 64-bit Windows versions, 16 bit was never supported not even on XP 64-bit. I think W8 was the first 64-bit only Windows.
Windows 11 was the first 64-bit only build of the NT-based Windows tree. There are 32-bit x86 builds of all previous versions.
Windows 11 drops IA32, and thus (first party) MS-DOS and Windows 3.x support.
Windows actually has some special cased support for (at least some of) the problematic 16 bit InstallShield installers to run a 32 bit version instead on AMD64.