If you ever wanted to use a modern C and C++ compiler on windows xp, 32 bit version of w64devkit[1] does target it and provides a recent gcc version.

[1] https://github.com/skeeto/w64devkit

▲ archargelod 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Coincidentally, just a few days ago, I tried to run Nim[0] on Windows XP as an experiment.

And to my surprise, the latest 32-bit release of Nim simply works out the box. But Nim compiles to C, so I also needed C compiler. Many versions of mingw I could find online - they all failed to launch.

After some time I managed to find very old Mingw (gcc 4.7.1) that have finally worked [1].

[0] - https://nim-lang.org/

[1] - https://ibb.co/TBdvZPVt

▲ userbinator 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From what I remember doing it several years ago, it was not too hard to patch MSVC 2019 to run on (not just generate binaries for) XP.

▲ acuozzo 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Anything for Win9x?

▲ unleaded 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I found out the other day you can use modern clang-cl with the MSVC6 headers and it just works. you can download them from here https://github.com/itsmattkc/MSVC600 or just copy it from an install if you have one handy.

then run (something like) this:

  clang-cl /winsysroot:"" /DWINVER=0x0400 /D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0400 -m32 /GS- -march=i586 -Wno-nonportable-include-path /imsvc"C:\MSVC6\VC98\Include" hello.c -fuse-ld=lld-link /link /SAFESEH:NO /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS,4.0 /LIBPATH:"C:\MSVC6\VC98\Lib" user32.lib kernel32.lib msvcrt.lib

I don't know if it's any better or worse than MinGW practically but it is definitely cursed.

▲ badsectoracula 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I haven't tried it but i saw this a few days ago: https://github.com/crazii/MINGW-toolchains-w9x

	▲	acuozzo 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you!!!