how to Ensure my program works across platforms?

[hanhao]

how to Ensure my program works across platforms? namely, win98se and winxp?

i know the easiest way to do is to simply test them across, but is there a better way?

i work on my program at home using winxp and go down to my office (with win 98se) once a week to test my work

since win98se is an older platform, the stuff i work on winxp might not always work on win98se

some stuff i know:
- when putting in new functions, check the function documentation to see if it works on the platform
- if function doesnt work, try a work around using other functions

does vc++6.0 SP6 have a "check across platform" function in it?
OR if not, is that a program/plugin (preferbly free because i am not paid for my work) that checks whether my code works on win98se and hopefully report the snippets of codes that doesnt work or the extra stuff that needs to be installed before it works? because i dont wanna go down to my office to find that whatever worked at home doesnt work in the office.




2nd qns : what does the following means? does it mean i gotta install extra stuff on win98se before the function works?

Requirements
Client: Requires Windows XP, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows NT Workstation, Windows Me, Windows 98, or Windows 95.
Server: Requires Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server, or Windows NT Server.
Unicode: Implemented as Unicode and ANSI versions. Note that Unicode support on Windows Me/98/95 requires Microsoft Layer for Unicode.Header: Declared in Winnetwk.h.
Library: Use Mpr.lib.

using :
- winxp at home, win98se at office
- vc++6.0 SP6
- MFC style

thanks in advance! :wave:

[jonnin]

Probably building on 98 and not doing anything virus - like (memory abuse, dos like hardware access, etc) and you will be mostly safe. There are a few things to watch for, such as mfc library versions and problems, but take it on a case by case as most things for 98 will run under xp.

[Butterfly]

If you use standard function, you won't concern about this. ;)

[jonnin]

Yep thats true. Those little command line programs do tend to be portable, and totally unacceptable in the modern world for most users. Do you really advocate just making commandline toys?

[hanhao]

intead of doing tests on the exe file.......
i believe that the best way is to have a program that scans the source code for functions that dont work with win98 OR win95 (as specified by the programmer) and report them

is there a program that does this?

[jonnin]

No, no one has made such a tool that I know about, and considering that 95,98, and NT are virtually dead, its probably not coming.

There are version issues too -- the same function may do slightly different things on different versions of windows. That problem is less now, but 95 was a hack that barely runs for an hour without a crash while 98 second edition can be made to be nearly stable. NT, 2K, and XP are stable, but NT is totally different from the others in several important ways. ME is junk that no one actually runs -- its on par with 95.

The best way to ensure that it works is to put it on the oldest thing you plan to support, keep it working there, and dont do anything funny with direct access of hardware, etc. Then you have a pretty good chance that it will work on newer versions.

[Danny]

a nit: your code is meant to run across different versions of Windows, not different platforms. Clearly, it won't run on Solaris or AIX...
As for Win9x: they're really dead. You can exclude them from the listed of supported OS's. Even Microsoft has done that so why shouldn't you? Does anyone support Windows 3.11 these days?

[jonnin]

outside the USA there are a number of 9x machines -- there are reasons to support it. 3.1 is still used a little in very poor countries as well. But aside from that, yea, they are dead.

[Danny]

Actually, I have an old nackup computer running win 95. It's so old that I don't want to upgrade and besides, I haven't touched it for months. It's useful only in emeregncy cases. I guess that other Win95 computers are generally calssified as "don't touch me". Users of these machines usually don't install new software or upgrade. They use it until some hardware fault causes the machine to entirely give up the ghost.