Officially end Windows 7 support

[ghost]

With issues like 20348 being closed as wontfix, I dont think its fair to say that Node supports Windows 7 anymore, as the experience with the default terminal is so bad as to be unusable.

I think it would be helpful to state here or similar:

https://nodejs.org/en/download

that Node now requires Windows 8 or Windows 10, whatever the case is.

[bzoz]

Having a cursor in REPL not always being visible is far from "Node does not support Windows 7".

If you want a further discussion, #20348 is the place for it to be held. Please don't spam the issue tracker.

[jasnell]

All issues are open for discussion when there is new relevant information brought in. The issue in #20348 appears to have been investigated thoroughly and it's simply not clear what, if anything, Node.js could do to fix an issue that appears to be limited to that specific console implementation in Windows 7. Suggestions on how to fix the issue are certainly welcome.

[ghost]

@jasnell something can certainly be done, as this problem has been solved by at least 5 other programming languages already. These all work as expected with default terminal on Windows 7:

• Python
• PHP
• Ruby
• Perl
• Lua

so the question is not "can it be done?", the question is "is node team willing to do it?". with the wontfix label here:

#20348 (comment)

the answer seems to be "node team is not willing to do, even if a pull was presented".

[jasnell]

All pull requests opened against node.js are considered. It's not apparent that anyone has opened one addressing this issue. If there is a known fix that works, then I would definitely encourage a PR.

[ghost]

@jasnell why would anyone bother creating a pull request for a wontfix issue?

[jasnell]

@cup that is up to you. PRs with workable solutions > issue labels. As I said, all pull requests opened are considered.

[seishun]

@cup it has been explained to you 3 times why your comparison with these languages is invalid: #20348 (comment), #20348 (comment), #20348 (comment). Please read these comments carefully.

[jasnell]

@cup, there's nothing else to be said here. You've been told multiple times that a PR would be considered. Others have taken the time to consider the issue but cannot see a reasonable solution. If you have a reasonable solution in mind, and desire to have a productive discussion, please open a PR.

[bzoz]

@cup Node REPL history is persistent between different console windows or machine reboots. It also supports TAB auto-completion. From the apps that you mentioned, I only have Python on my box, and it does not support those features. If however some other app has those and works with Win7 console - let us know (preferably in #20348) and we will investigate. Someone somewhere might have fixed this issue.

The "wontfix" means that neither I nor any contributor is likely to address this issue, as the only valid solution we know of at this point would be hard to implement and would also carry a nontrivial maintenance burden. If someone finds another way to fix that - or would even implement a line-mode REPL that would work - we would gladly welcome such PR.

[ghost]

thanks all. it seems we just have a fundamental disagreement on what wontfix means. I will not be making a pull request on any issue that is marked as such.

take care

[benjamingr]

I agree with bzoz and the rest of the team here regarding our REPL.

That said - Windows 7 is going to stop being supported by Microsoft in just a few months in January 2020.

I think we should probably drop official support and make it second class (like Android) at that point.

[seishun]

I think we should probably drop official support and make it second class (like Android) at that point.

No need to do that explicitly. See https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/BUILDING.md#platform-list:

Node.js does not support a platform version if a vendor has expired support for it. In other words, Node.js does not support running on End-of-Life (EoL) platforms. This is true regardless of entries in the table below.

[CyberFoxHax]

Just so people coming from Google doesn't walk away with nothing: Nodejs 13 is the last version supporting Windows 7.

https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v13.x/node-v13.14.0-x64.msi
https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v13.x/node-v13.14.0-x86.msi

That should be enough to get you up and running.

[native-api]

@CyberFoxHax You forgot to mention that 13.14 is not an LTS release so many mainstream packages (e.g. Jest) do not support it.

So the last LTS release to support Windows 7 is 12.22.7:

https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v12.x/node-v12.22.7-x64.msi
https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v12.x/node-v12.22.7-x86.msi