BC does not work on Windows for years

[sergeevabc]

The last BC version that works on Windows 7 x64 is 5.2.5 (May 1, 2022). All subsequent versions can be run (see screenshot below), but it is impossible to enter anything. The app does not respond even to Ctrl+C and has to be terminated via X button or the task manager.

[gavinhoward]

The reason for this is probably because the next release fixed history on Windows, but I think the changes to Windows that the fix required only appeared in Windows 10.

The fix would be to turn off history in the build.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to turn off history in the current Windows build, and the README does say that only Windows 10 or later is supported. In other words, this could be closed as not a bug since Windows 7 is out of support.

That said, I will not close this. I have a new build system in the works that will allow me to turn off history. This has been the case for a year or two, but life has gotten in the way. I do plan to continue work on the build system, but it's not likely that I will be able to do it soon. And even when I finish it, the build system is only for my use, but I can make sure I provide history-free builds.

tl;dr: This is not a bug, but I'd like to provide binaries that work on Windows 7. It may take a while, so please be patient.

[sergeevabc]

This is not a bug, but I'd like to provide binaries that work on Windows 7. It may take a while, so please be patient.

Thank you, I'll wait.

Not a bug if you will, but surely something that breaks backward compatibility principle. Not to mention we're talking about a classic CLI calculator. Some large cinematic games like BioShock work perfectly fine on Windows 7, even on Windows XP according to the official system requirements), but not bc? Don't get me wrong, this sounds like a bad joke: addition, subtraction, division and multiplication have been available to people via bc for decades and suddenly Windows 10 is the requirement? Meh. It's just a matter of compilation toolchain, the math is still the same.

[gavinhoward]

I do get where you're coming from, and I am sorry that you are frustrated.

I hate to say this, but I'm not sure backwards compatibility applies here. If you run the following command:

$ git df $(git rev-parse f9f45cd15^) f9f45cd15

which diffs f9f45cd15 against its parent commit, once bc supported Windows, it was always Windows 10 or later. This makes sense because Windows 10 was released in 2015, but I only began development of this bc in January 2018. This bc is relatively young; it's not the GNU bc which was started in 1991, I believe.

So this bc would technically never have been compatible with anything other than Windows 10, which was 2.5 years old when I started bc and 6 years old when I started supporting Windows in 2021.

But I will do what I can to provide something as soon as I can.