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

["James M. Scardelis, CISA, CIPP, CIPP/IT, MCT, MCSE, CTT+" <jim () jceltd com>]

That’s correct. Setting v120_xp forces the use of old headers, libraries and a subset of the tools that were in the old 
Windows SDK 7.1. Its use is not recommended, especially now that Windows XP is not a supported platform, and looking 
forward, many of its APIs etc. will be deprecated. You should only use this flag when specifically compiling versions 
intended to be down-level applications.

From 
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chuckw/archive/2013/10/18/visual-studio-2013-and-windows-8-1-sdk-rtm-are-now-available.aspx :

Windows XP developers: as with VS 2012, the "v120_xp" platform toolset in VS 2013 uses a version of the Windows 7.1 
SDK, not Windows 8.x SDK. See Visual Studio 2012 Update 
1<http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chuckw/archive/2012/11/26/visual-studio-2012-update-1.aspx>.

Also note that Windows 10 GA is next week, and Visual Studio 2015 was released this past Monday. The SDK for Windows 10 
will be released on July 29th along with Windows 10.
See 
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/07/20/visual-studio-2015-and-visual-studio-2013-update-5-released.aspx

        [cid:image002.png@01D0C4A6.DC8344F0]



Jim Scardelis, CISA|QSA|PA-QSA|PCIP|CIPP/US|CIPP/C|CIPP/E|CIPP/IT|MCT|MCSE|MTA|CTT+

Senior Security Consultant, Trustwave
• +1 (425) 296-6092 | | • jim () jceltd com<mailto:jim () jceltd com>  |þ http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimscard/
Any views or opinions contained in this communication are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily represent 
those of Trustwave, or any other organizations or entities the author may be associated with.

From: dev [mailto:dev-bounces () nmap org] On Behalf Of Fyodor
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 5:27 PM
To: Richard Browne
Cc: Nmap Development List
Subject: Re: Bug: nmap doesn't run on Windows XP anymore

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 4:50 PM, Richard Browne <richard () timestone com au<mailto:richard () timestone com au>> wrote:
On 23 Jul 2015, at 6:38 am, Fyodor <fyodor () nmap org<mailto: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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