[Lazarus] Phasing out support for Windows 98 and Windows ME

[Marc Santhoff]

On Mi, 2015-12-09 at 14:36 +0100, Bart wrote:
> Dear Lazarus users,
> 
> The Lazarus team has decided to finally phase out support for the
> Windows 9x platform.
> 
> Reasons for doing so are:
> 1) The platform is not supported anymore by Microsoft.
> 2) The platform is hardly in use anymore.

It is, regarding some industrial stuff. Those installations are made for
long life, 20y+.

> 3) The new 3.0 series compiler does not support this platform anymore.
> 4) There is only 1 maintainer of the Windows 9x code base.
> 5) Cleaning up the Win32 widgetset code will make it easier to
> maintain and less prone to bugs.

I understand the motivation.
Go on. ;)

> It may (or may not) be necessary to build your application using the
> 2.6.4 compiler in order to get a functional Windows 9x application.
[...]
> We are aware of the fact that this decision may affect a niche group
> of Lazarus users who develop for end-uses that still run Windows 98,
> but these can still use the 1.6 branch of Lazarus.

It would be helpful for those few user that
- have running installation of Win9x with fpc/lazarus programs
- have to be able to compile old programs

to know an easy way of getting the correct compiler and maybe lazarus
version. I suggest making at least a tagged version in svn and maybe a
branch and executable that clearly states "last working version for
Win9x" or similar.

Thank for attention,
Marc

-- 
Marc Santhoff <M.Santhoff at web.de>