[Bug target/111170] [13/14 regression] Malformed manifest does not allow to run gcc on Windows XP (Accessing a corrupted shared library) since r13-6552-gd11e088210a551

["lh_mouse at 126 dot com" <gcc-bugzilla@gcc.gnu.org>]

https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=111170

--- Comment #5 from LIU Hao <lh_mouse at 126 dot com> ---
(In reply to Costas Argyris from comment #4)
> A couple of comments:
> 
> 1) Isn't Windows XP officially not supported any more?    If that is the
> case, does it make sense to introduce a new configure option solely to deal
> with an unsupported host?    I'm not even sure why this is called a
> regression, given that it breaks something that is not officially supported.

I don't think we have declared Windows XP unsupported. There was even an
attempt to maintain Windows 98:
https://www.mail-archive.com/mingw-w64-public@lists.sourceforge.net/msg21399.html

I think the decision is probably we have default as Windows 10 but don't break
old systems by intention, so when someone requests it they get it.


> 2) Would it be easier if, instead of excluding the manifest via a new
> configure option, we somehow made the manifest file itself smart enough to
> ignore itself when running on Windows XP?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/win7appqual/compatibility---application-manifest#manifestation-of-change

```
Applications without a Compatibility section in their manifest will receive
Windows Vista behavior by default on Windows 7 and future Windows versions.
Note that Windows XP and Windows Vista ignore this manifest section and it has
no impact on them.
```

But Microsoft documentation sometimes lies. If Windows XP does not ignore the
manifest and fails instead, we will need a solution.


> which has separate entries for all the Windows versions, marking them as
> 'supportedOS'.
> 
> Would it be possible to do this in the GCC manifest and solve this problem,
> or did I misunderstand how the compatibility section works?

XP was not assigned a UUID because it (2001) predated this manifest thing (2004
or 2005 I guess? since MSVCR80).