Platform Notes

Windows 95/98/ME

The library is designed to compile and run on Win9x with appropriate toolchains.

Compiler Options

Open Watcom 2.0 — Targets Win16 and Win32. Use the Win32 target for this SDK. Supports C++14 partially; the SDK avoids features that Watcom lacks.
Visual C++ 6.0 — The last MSVC to produce Win9x-native binaries without compatibility shims. May need minor adjustments for template support.
MinGW with -mwindows — Modern MinGW can target Win9x if the right runtime is used. Pair with the WinINet backend.

HTTP Backend

Use WinInetHttpClient. WinINet (wininet.dll) is available on Win9x when Internet Explorer 3.0+ is installed — which is virtually every Win9x system in practice.

libcurl can also be built for Win9x but requires more setup. WinINet is the path of least resistance.

Script Execution

BatchScriptRunner uses only Win32 APIs available since Windows 95:

CreateProcessA
CreatePipe
GetEnvironmentStringsA / FreeEnvironmentStringsA
GetTempPathA / GetTempFileNameA
ReadFile, WaitForSingleObject, GetExitCodeProcess

No Unicode APIs (W-suffix) are used. All string handling is ANSI.

Archive Extraction

The IArchiveExtractor interface has no built-in implementation. For Win9x:

minizip (part of zlib) is the recommended backend. zlib compiles cleanly with Watcom and MSVC 6.
The Crc32 utility class has zero dependencies and works everywhere.

Considerations

All string handling uses std::string (ANSI). No std::wstring or Unicode assumptions.
No C++11 thread, mutex, or chrono usage in the core library.
std::function (from <functional>) is used for callbacks. If your toolchain lacks it, you can replace DownloadProgressFn and ExtractionProgressFn with plain function pointers.
The library avoids long long in public APIs where possible, but uses it for file sizes (Archive::compressed_size, etc.) which may exceed 2GB.

Modern Windows (7/10/11)

Everything works out of the box with MSVC 2015+ or MinGW-w64. Both HTTP backends are available.

For the script runner, BatchScriptRunner works. If you need PowerShell execution, implement IScriptRunner to invoke powershell.exe -File.

Linux / macOS

Use the CurlHttpClient backend (requires libcurl).

BatchScriptRunner is Windows-only and returns an error on other platforms. Implement IScriptRunner with a shell-based runner:

class ShellScriptRunner : public lancommander::IScriptRunner {
    // Use fork/exec or popen to run /bin/sh scripts
    // Inject variables via the environment block passed to execve
};

The Crc32 utility and IArchiveExtractor interface are fully portable.

Cross-Compilation

Win9x from a Modern Linux Host

# Using MinGW cross compiler targeting i686
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. \
    -DCMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME=Windows \
    -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=i686-w64-mingw32-gcc \
    -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=i686-w64-mingw32-g++
cmake --build .

Embedded / Minimal Systems

The core library's only dependency is a C++14 standard library and cJSON (vendored C). If your target has a C standard library but limited C++:

The models are plain structs — they just need <string>, <vector>, <map>
JSON parsing uses only C APIs (cJSON)
Result<T> uses std::string and move semantics

Backend Selection Summary

Target	HTTP Backend	Script Runner	Archive Extractor
Windows 95/98/ME	WinInetHttpClient	BatchScriptRunner	minizip (bring your own)
Windows XP+	WinInetHttpClient	BatchScriptRunner	minizip or libarchive
Windows 10/11	Either	BatchScriptRunner	minizip or libarchive
Linux	CurlHttpClient	ShellScriptRunner (bring your own)	libarchive
macOS	CurlHttpClient	ShellScriptRunner (bring your own)	libarchive

Compiler Compatibility Matrix

Compiler	Minimum Version	Notes
MSVC	2015 (v19.0)	Full support
GCC	5.0	Full support
Clang	3.4	Full support
MinGW-w64	5.0	Full support
Open Watcom	2.0	May need minor workarounds for `<functional>`
Visual C++ 6.0	SP6	Template limitations; may need `std::function` replaced with function pointers

4.3 KiB Raw Permalink Blame History