The Lazarus team has decided to finally phase out support for the Windows 9x platform.
Reasons for doing so are:
- The platform is not supported anymore by Microsoft.
- The platform is hardly in use anymore.
- The new 3.0 series compiler does not support this platform anymore.
- There is only 1 maintainer of the Windows 9x code base.
- Cleaning up the Win32 widgetset code will make it easier to maintain and less prone to bugs.
The phasing out will take place in 2 stages:
Stage 1.
Starting with the upcoming Lazarus 1.6 there will be no more active development in the code that was specifically written for dealing with the Window 9x platform.
However, patches (when supplied in the bugtracker) for bugs in this code can still be applied to the 1.6 fixes branch.
It may (or may not) be necessary to build your application using the 2.6.4 compiler in order to get a functional Windows 9x application.
Stage 2.
Starting with the 1.7 development branch (AKA trunk) all code that was specifically written for the Windows 9x platform will be removed from our codebase. From that point on software written with this version (or later) of Lazarus will most likely either not run at all, or not run as expected
on the Windows 9x platform.
If you need to develop Win98/ME software you can still use the Lazarus 1.6 branch with FPC 2.6.4.