java.net.NetworkInterface

[Ranjit Mathew]

>While we're on the subject, what is our level of support for Win9X?
>I'm new to this. I'm asking because for enumerating the network
>interfaces, I've been able to find functions like this:
>
>http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/iphlp/iphlp/getinterfaceinfo.asp
>
>that aren't supported on Win95. Do we care? Whose decision is
>it whether we support Win95? Is there a way to do this on Win95?

Some of the Win32 APIs used in GCJ are there simply because the
better ones couldn't be used on Win95 or Win98/ME.

The most important such restriction is sticking to WinSock 1.1 instead
of the *much better* WinSock 2.x which is there on all Windows
versions from Win98 onwards - and even for Win95, can be
downloaded anyways from the MS site. You can find more discussion
on this issue in the thread starting from this message:

    http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/java/2002-10/msg00238.html

Note that since WinSock 1.1 doesn't provide all the APIs we need, we
use WinSock 2.x for those functions. This mixture of the two radically
different library versions is something that I personally am not quite
comfortable with.

Note also that since the Win32 port uses MinGW, it is dependent on
MSVCRT.DLL which is not present on a "really vanilla Win95" box.

For all practical purposes though, a Win95 machine in "real use" is
very likely to have these two DLLs and just in case that it doesn't,
they can very easily be downloaded and installed from the MS site.

BTW, a number of people *still* use Win95 and expect GCJ to
work on it. On the other hand, it is also worthwhile to note that
MS itself has stopped supporting Win95 a while ago. You might
also want to consider that Sun's JDK 1.4.1 itself does not support
Win95:

    http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.1/install-windows.html

As for the "who decides this" part, IMO the active set of maintainers
for a port do, unless strongly objected to by users of the port.

You can perhaps put your decisions to vote in this forum (and be
nice enough to drop a note on this to Adam) and if people do not
object for a "reasonable" amount of time, go ahead with it. :-)

My personal suggestion would be to support Win9x as much as
is reasonably possible, but no more. For example, use useful APIs
provided by core "extra" DLLs like MSVCRT, WinSock 2.x, etc.
that are very likely to be installed on a user's box and just in
case they are not, can easily be installed without problems.

Ranjit.

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