[erlang-questions] Erlang on Windows NT4

[Jon Gretar Borgthorsson]

I think it's not realistic to expect an OS that has not been sold for 10
years to be supported. Simply getting it somewhere to test it is a major
problem. As is getting hardware old enough so that NT4 runs.No new software
runs on NT4 and I highly reccomend that you stop supporting it too.


On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 9:35 AM, Sebastian Egner <s.egner@REDACTED> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> As the release notes for Erts 5.6.1 report under Section 1.4.1
> "Improvements and New Features",
> Windows NT4 is not supported any longer by Erlang/OTP, i.e. from R12B incl.
>
> Indeed, trying to install Erlang/OTP R12B-3 on a Windows-NT4 system
> reports:
>
>    "The procedure entry point GetLongPathNameW could not be located in
> the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll",
>
> without any indication that this Windows OS is not supported, and no
> Erlang VM can be run.
>
> Is this a bug, or does the NSIS installer simply not test for the
> version of the operating system?
>
>
> More important, however, is my related question:
>
>     *Are there any plans to support Windows NT4 again in the future?*
>
> Let me briefly explain the background of this question: In November 2007
> our company (SPECS GmbH)
> decided to invest in Erlang as a future platform for controlling our
> products, which are serious machines (up
> to 2.5 M$) for studying the physical properties of solid surfaces. Our
> current software is a huge thing in Visual
> C++ 6.0, glued together with CORBA and the Windows Registry. So far, our
> findings of using Erlang/OTP are
> extremely encouraging. We have been able to interface with other parts
> of the software using CORBA and
> Erlinterface with very little effort, and could write a layered system
> of drivers for ion guns, x-ray guns, etc. in
> a very convenient and efficient fashion. (For the GUI we use Java/SWT.)
>
> Unfortunately, our customers usually retire their old desktop PCs to
> their laboratories, and expect our
> software to run on these platforms. In addition, we have lots of
> customers in countries where people
> cannot afford to follow Microsoft's pace of product introduction, and
> generally do not upgrade their
> PCs every year. Using a non-Microsoft OS is also not an option, because
> our customers use other
> software with severe Microsoft lock-in for interpreting their
> experimental data.
>
> Now if R11B-5 will be the last version to support Windows NT4, we have a
> very serious problem with
> Erlang/OTP---in particular, because two significant bugs ('ic'
> generating unusable code and Erlinterface
> not being able to communicate 0.0 correctly) that I had reported in
> R11B-5 are only fixed in R12B,
> which came out 5-Dec-2007 and doesn't run on NT4 anymore (as I was
> surprised to learn today).
>
> What advice would you give me on this situation?
>
> Sebastian
>
> P.S. Excuse me if you had this discussion already, and are tired of it
> being iterated at such a late point in time.
>
> --
>
> Dr. Sebastian Egner
> Head of Software &
> Electronics Development
>
> SPECS GmbH
> Voltastr. 5
> 13355 Berlin
> Germany
>
> Phone: +49 (0)30 46 78 24 - 9210
> Fax: +49 (0)30 46 42 083
> E-Mail: s.egner@REDACTED
>
> Please visit www.specs.de
>
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