Re: Bug: nmap doesn't run on Windows XP anymore

[Fyodor <fyodor () nmap org>]

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 4:50 PM, Richard Browne <richard () timestone com au>
wrote:

> On 23 Jul 2015, at 6:38 am, Fyodor <fyodor () nmap org> wrote:
> >
>
> There isn't really much to write up. All that needs to be done is open up
> the vcxproj files and change the lines
> "<PlatformToolset>v120</PlatformToolset>” to
> "<PlatformToolset>v120_xp</PlatformToolset>”. That’s it.
>
> I downloaded nmap-6.49BETA4 and tested this. It compiled fine and no
> source code changes were needed. The resulting nmap.exe runs fine on XPsp3.
> Given that it’s such a trivial change, why not support it?

Hi Richard, and thanks for the extra testing and info.  That is useful.
I'm not much of a Windows developer, so this is a little beyond my
expertise.  But my understanding is that setting v120_xp rather than v120
forces us to use the old Windows SDK 7.1 rather than the newer 8.1.  While
we apparently don't yet use any newer functions which aren't in the old
API, I presume (hope) that the newer API has bug fixes and general
improvements that MS has made over the years.  So I worry that using the
old toolset in our main installer may make things a bit worse for the 96%
(and growing) of us with a newer versions of Windows in order to support
the 4% (and shrinking) still using XP.

Though if someone has any good evidence that v120_xp is just as good as
v120 for the modern Windows users, that would definitely change the
calculation.

Also, we're working on a new and better version of WinPcap (Npcap) and it
uses NDIS 6 and Windows Filtering Platform (WPF) and I don't think our
current version of Npcap works on XP.   So that may become an issue if and
when we integrate Npcap into Nmap.

We're working on the big Nmap 6.50 stable release and so perhaps the best
approach is, after we release that, to create a special Windows XP
compatible installer.  And maybe that will tide the remaining Windows XP
users over until they upgrade to a more modern OS like Windows 7 or 8 or 10
or Linux or Mac.

Cheers,
Fyodor

PS: Here is some related info I found:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24240371/vs2013-v120-xp-as-platform-toolset-by-default

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