[hpsdr] VS2013 and WinXP

[George Byrkit]

I didn't imagine that my comments would spark so much discussion, but that is  a good
thing!  It has brought out some good comments, some public and some private, and has also
brought out some misinformation that needs to be cleared up.

So some of you mistook 'building ON WinXP' for 'building FOR WinXP'.  VS2013 can build FOR
WinXP, as long as we keep the .Net Framework fixed at version 4.0.  Moving to version
4.5(.1) would leave people on WinXP behind.

If you have a perfectly good WinXP machine, there is no reason to pay money to upgrade the
OS to Win7.  And now, you'd have to upgrade to Win8.1, since technically Win7 isn't on the
'open market' any more.

The thing about VS2010 was about using .Net 4.0.  Native apps on WinXP can install and use
the VC Redistributables for VC 12 (VS2013), just fine.  Native apps are C/C++ code that is
NOT managed code.  VB.Net and C# are managed code...

I know these things because we use VS2013 at work to build a large windows app for the
education market space, and it works fine on WinXP thru Win 8.1.  It will also work on win
10.

Now about Ken N9VV's overly optimistic statements about Windows 10:  It is ONLY in
'technology preview' phase so far.  No 'beta' builds and no 'release candidates', so we
are a LONG WAY from 'RTM' (release to manufacturing).  The earliest Christmas it will be
available for will be Christmas 2015!  NOT Christmas 2014.

This whole discussion is about where to keep the development (BUILDING of PowerSDR, Kiss
Konsole and related items), not about where it can run.  We can move to VS2013 to build
it, and it can still run on WinXP, as long as we stay with .Net Framework 4.0.