Clarifying Windows tier 1 support policy

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Currently Rust supports Windows 7+ as a tier one target. However, Microsoft's support is more limited. The table below lists versions of Windows and the date at which Microsoft will stop supporting them. The versions in bold have server editions that are hosted on Azure Pipelines.

Version Build Number End of support
7 6.1.7600 2013-04-09
7 SP1 6.1.7601 2023-01-10
8 6.2.9200 2016-01-12
8.1* 6.3.9600 2023-01-10
1507 10.0.10240 2025-10-14
1511 10.0.10586 2018-01-09
1607 10.0.14393 2026-10-13
1703 10.0.15063 2019-06-11
1709 10.0.16299 2020-10-13
1803 10.0.17134 2020-11-10
1809 10.0.17763 2029-01-09
1903 10.0.18362 2020-12-08
1909 10.0.18363 2022-05-10
2004 10.0.19041 2021-12-14
* Here "8.1" actually means "8.1 Update 1" but that's a very silly name.

Note that what this table doesn't show is that Windows 7 SP1 is currently in its "Extended Security Updates" phase. Which means that only high paying customers can get support or security updates. And Microsoft are strongly encouraging even those customers to upgrade to a newer version.

So I'm aware that Rust uses Azure Pipelines and thus can automatically run tests on the versions bolded in the table. My question is if any other versions are tested systematically or if this is left to individual developers?

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To clarify further, this isn't a major issue or anything like that. My curiosity was prompted by my difficultly in finding a way to test an application in Windows 7. Fortunately I found an old VM left lying around.

And even without systematic testing on older versions this still isn't the biggest deal in the world. If rust developers are careful about the APIs they use it should usually "just work" across versions (version specific bugs aside). And if it doesn't it will hopefully get picked up quickly by people using Rust on an affected version.

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You may want to join the conversation here:

2 Likes
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Ah thanks!

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