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Comment by duskdozer

13 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.

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duskdozer

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s1mplicissimus  12 hours ago

> 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

Fulgen  3 hours ago

In Rust or in general? Because an arbitrary "too old" moniker is not something I've seen happening, and the only target that was removed instead of demoted in recent times was i586-pc-windows-msvc, aka Windows 10 without SSE, which was...utterly pointless since Windows 10 requires SSE.

If anything, I quite like the way Rust handles it with target tiers and easy switching between targets, because it's an honest approach about how well a target is supported. Having a win7 target that is tier 3 is a reflection of the support it has, and much better than stringing it along in the main Windows target that promises tested support when there isn't even a Windows 7 CI to test on.

TylerE  10 hours ago

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.