bug#55015: V28.1 can't run on WinXP 32bit

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2022 10:24:42 +0800 (CST)
> From: "Chen Xiaodong" <lokr@163.com>
> 
> I have been using Emacs 27.2 normally, today I update it to V28.1, the
> new version just not start. It says "***runemacs.exe is not a valid
> Win32 applicaton".
> 
> Have you offered a Win32 version as usual?
> 
> Some one in someplace are still obliged to use old WinXP machines.

It isn't our fault.  The "official" binaries provided on the GNU FTP
sites use MinGW64 for building the native Windows port of Emacs, and
MinGW64 dropped support for Windows XP (and I believe also Vista and
Windows 7) quite some time ago.  Which in practice means there's no
point for us to provide 32-bit binaries of Emacs, because the only
systems on which they are needed are no longer supported by the
MinGW64 runtime libraries.

To have an Emacs binary suitable for Windows XP, you must compile
Emacs with mingw.org's MinGW (https://osdn.net/projects/mingw/releases),
which is what I do, and the result runs on my Windows XP very well
(and should also run on older versions of Windows, although AFAIK that
was not tested for a long time).

Maybe some volunteer will step forward and provide 32-bit Windows
binaries of Emacs that can be used on those older version of Windows.