With the announcement that VB6 will be supported on Windows 8, my question is:
Is there any place where Microsoft has said (Yes or No) VB6 apps will run on the ARM based Tablets?
And, if not, is there any ARM emulator, so we could test our VB6 apps on a Windows 8 ARM Tablet?
My understanding is: No. Windows 8 will support 2 different APIs: Win32 (and .NET on top of that) and WinRT. The Windows 8 ARM builds will only support WinRT. VB6 is compiled against the Win32 API, it won't work on the ARM tablets.
As explained by Adam Mihalcin in this answer.
On ARM, there are no 3rd party desktop apps, VB6 or otherwise. And you won't see support for VB6 with the new Metro framework because... well... VB6 was deprecated like 10 years ago.
It's time to invest in a rewrite.
Related
I'm a little confused and do not know whether I understand the issues properly, so be sure to I turn to you for help.
I have Windows 10 Pro X68, for development using VS 2015 and SDK 10. And I write the bachelor work that deals with the development of applications for Windows Phone 8.1 and now also for Windows Mobile 10 (UWP).
I'm wondering, as illustrated below, if Windows 10 include "Desktop
Apps" section as in architecture W8.1 (is Desktop App section from W8.1 image available in W10)?
I read that the UWP is an improved version of WinRT for all platforms, and is not used name
WinRT(in W10), but the name UWP?
WinRT replaced Win32 application development for mobile platform
(Metro UI - Apps Store), but for Win32 can develop in W10 and W8.1?
Sorry for my English.
THX a lot.
(WinRT Revealed, 2012, Michael Mayberry, 978-1-4302-4584-1)
(Real World Windows 10 Development, 2015,Edard Moemeka and Elizabeth Moemeka, 978-1-4842-1450-3)
I have a full fledged app built for windows 8.1...
Through my research, I discovered that the api changes between 8.1 and 10 is nt that much and an app built for 8.1 will work on 10..
So my question now is will a windows 10 app work on windows 8.1?
If yes, how can I go about it?
I've created a report on changes for WinAPI 8 vs WinAPI 10 that may help you to discover differences in details. It's available on this page. The report is generated with the help of the ABI-CC tool.
Since apps built for WP8.1 don't work on WP8, then I doubt that Windows 10 Mobile apps will work on WP8.1. As far as I'm aware, there are more differences between those two systems' API than between 8.1 and 8.0
Btw, are you asking about the desktop systems or the mobile ones (as the tag you used suggests)?
I am a little confused. When I search the internet I see examples of Windows CE running on Raspberry Pi or Samsung ARM11. However, I cannot be sure if they hacked it somehow or CE officially runs on ARM devices.
If it does not, should I use Windows Embedded products to target arm processors?
And the last question is that How does Windows CE fare when compared to Windows Embedded 7 in terms of footprint?
Can anybody enlighten me please?
Yes, Windows CE (lately renamed Windows Embedded Compact) runs on ARM. Up to version 6 it supported also SH4 and in Compact 7 MIPS.
Latest version is named (confusingly) Windows Embedded Compact 2013 and Microsoft is committed to support it up to 2023.
It's a different kernel (real-time) but provides some compatibility at the API level with desktop and server versions.
The new Windows IoT Core version runs on Raspberry Pi 2 (ARMv7) and uses the same kernel of the PC version.
Microsoft used an ARM build of Windows CE for Windows Phone 7, 7.5, 7.8, before they jumped to running NT on their ARM phones. For sure it exists.
I can't figure out if you can actually get it though. They have "Windows Embedded Compact 7", but from the documentation, it sounds like it's only x86 and amd64. But maybe there's some way to get the ARM version... maybe an MSDN license or by being some kind of business partner with Microsoft?
On second thought, this link: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/windows-embedded-compact-7.aspx suggests that it does work for ARM.
Bonus: Apparently Windows 10 will run on the Raspberry Pi 2: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/windows-on-arm-lives-on-even-as-it-dies/ The only question is if they'll keep requiring every non-app .exe to be signed by Microsoft like they did with the surface RT, preventing normal win32 or .NET programs from being possible to develop for ARM on NT. If they don't give us that crazy restriction, this could be pretty neat.
Microsoft no longer supports VB6 development and support from Microsoft has already stopped. But VB6 applications still run on Windows 8.1. See also this article titled "Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1".
When would a VB6 application stop running on Windows? Is there any official statement from Microsoft or any clue about the same?
EDIT:
In this link, the Visual Studio team has mentioned that, "It will be supported at least through 2024". But it's not clear whether they said it's supported in Windows 8 till 2024 or in future release of windows OS too.
The "2024" means as part of Windows 8. The link says the VB6 runtime is part of Windows and therefore will be supported in the same way as the rest of Windows. For example Windows 8 will be supported until 2024 because that's the support lifecycle for Windows 8.
EDIT: Microsoft have now said the VB6 runtime is officially part of Windows 10 too.
EDIT: the VB6 IDE (not runtime) is no longer officially supported on any version of Windows, but there are ways to get it to work on Windows 7 and 8.
Uservoice: The VB6 runtime it is still a component of the Windows operating
system and is a component shipped in Windows 8.1. It will be supported
at least through 2024
It seems clear they mean VB6 will be supported through 2024, not just VB6 on Windows 8 (whose mainstream support ends 6 years earlier anyway).
The VB6 programming language installs and runs on Windows 7, 8.x and 10.
There is a utility to install it here: VB6 IDE install utility
It is in Microsoft's interests for VB6 applications to run in Windows 10 and so they probably will. The same is probably true of most old application frameworks: Microsoft works hard to maintain compatibility. The IDE runs on Windows 7 (not sure about 8 or 10).
However, just because Microsoft says VB6 will run it doesn't mean your particular application will work, particularly if you use third party components. You should at least be thinking about migrating to another development environment.
From what I heard, VB6 applications still work on Windows 10 technical preview. I've seen no official statement yet, but it would seem that VB6 will stay supported for at least a few years.
Microsoft have just stated for VB6 programming on Windows 10:-
"Windows is committed to compatibility. The Windows compatibility team
has been looking at user telemetry and reacting to feedback from
Windows Insiders to ensure that existing apps work well with Windows
10. Windows 10 is designed to run Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 software programs. And yes, everyone’s favorite VB6 Runtime will
continue to work, too. In the near future, the compat team will go
more in-depth on this topic on Blogging Windows."
Everyone's favorite VB6 programming on Windows 10
So VB6 programming will work on Windows 10, as does VBA programming.
They also state that 'Project Centennial' Universal Windows Platform Bridge will work with VB6 code.
Instructions for installing the VB6 IDE are available here...
In my personal experience if you build a dll in VB6 and add it as a component to COM Plus in Server 2016 it just won't add. You will get an error such as the following, even for a 'Hello World' component.
A registry value was changed while installing the following component
into a COM+ Application. If you are experiencing activation problems
with this component then please check the registry value for the
following key.
Component: C:\temp\Project1.dll
Registry Key:
CLSID\{D5DE8D20-5BB8-11D1-A1E3-00A0C90F2731}\InProcServer32
Process Name: RunDll32.exe Comsvcs.dll file version: not loaded
There is a project to provide a new language "RADBasic" which is intended to be compatible with the VB6 programming language.
New language compatible with VB6 programming
Looks like Microsoft just extended VB6 runtime support out to Windows 11 and Server 2022. No such luck for the IDE though.
Read more from Microsoft here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/visual-basic-6/visual-basic-6-support-policy
As Microsoft said that windows 8 and windows phone 8 share the same code base. If I use visual studio 2012 RC write an application for windows 8. I want to know whether I can install and run the same application on windows phone 8?
If the answer is yes we can prepare ourselves for windows phone 8 SDK by learning Visual Studio 2012 RC for windows 8 today!
Right now they haven't announced everything, so this is just my speculation.
I guess that you will not be able deploy the same app (xap file) to WP8 and Windows 8. This by design. Why? Because they are very different systems. Your beautiful, fast and awesome Windows Phone app will suck on Windows 8. There is no silver bullet. It's the same for HTML. You have to create separate mobile version of the web app, otherwise nobody will use it.
They share the same kernel and probably plenty of APIs. But that doesn't mean the runtime environment in which your applications run is the same. E.g. very different form factors make it necessary to adapt the app anyway. Since they never said that Windows Phone 8 has the same application programming model as Windows 8 you can at the moment safely expect not to be able to deploy the same app to both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.
That being said, you probably can expect to share a lot of code between both systems, especially if you're using either C# or C++ (with native apps coming to WP8 too).
Application compiled for WP8 won't just run on Windows 8, but you can share lot of code into common libraries.
There is a chapter in Windows Phone 8 SDK about targeting both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development. Mostly is possible either by Portable Class Libraries, referencing common files both in W8 and WP8 projects or using Windows Runtime Components.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35471
Many Application designed for wp8 work on windows8 also as The developer have also to decide whether it will work in both of then,usually windows8 has not enough graphic and motion control so some WP games do not run on windows8,, You can always see any app permission notice to understand whether it work on wp8 or not on other hand there were also some windows game that has as much graphics that WP could not run,,
Like if you want game like assassins creed it will run on both operating system(WP,window) but in different manner
So it's chooses by game properties that define cap package to run or not