Edit note: After a seemingly enourmous amount of bad feedback MS got from their customers regarding the drop-XP-stunt, they have announced that a patch will be released that’ll allow to build executables for XP. So the base for this Q is no lonher really there, but I think it collects some very interesting infos.
As established here: What is special about the executables compiled with Visual Studio 11 which results in that the executables cannot be executed on Windows XP?
and in this Connect bug/issue: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/690617, Visual Studio 11 (planned release 2012) is planned to no longer support Windows XP.
That means you cannot create a native C++ executable that can be executed on Windows XP. (One reason being that the new CRT will use Windows API calls that are only available on Windows Vista and higher.)
In one answer, Anders writes:
They seem to drop support for older systems in every new release of VS (NT4,2000,XP) …
What interests me now is whether this move by Microsoft to drop Windows XP support completely from VS11 C++ can actually be compared to prior releases.
What I mean is, when was support for which OS (NT3.5 / NT4 / 2000sp6 // Win95 / Win98 / …) completely dropped from Visual C++. (and “what part” of Visual C++ — the compiler, the CRT, the Windows SDK?)
For example, I think I know that VC6 is the last version of VS that can be used to create executables that run on Windows NT4. I also seem to remember that the dropped support for Win2k had more to do with the Windows SDK you are using than with the actual compiler or CRT, but I’m not sure.
Is there a good resource that shows which MS compilers in which setting can produce compatible code for which OS versions? Is the timing of VS11 (year 2012) no longer supporting a OS that is widely installed (but no longer sold) comparable to prior releases?
One point of interest is that we’re in the middle of the shift from C++03 to C++11, and if you’re stuck with Windows XP and VC10, the you’re stuck with the limited (and partially non-standard) C++11 support it has to offer.
I think it makes sense to compare VS release dates against when the Windows versions became unsupported, rather than when the Windows versions were released.
Once an OS reaches the end of extended support it stops getting security updates and anyone still running it can be considered insane and ignored (outside of very special cases). Before then, it seems legitimate (albeit annoying at times) for people to still use old OS versions and expect software to support them (although vendors, both third-parties and Microsoft themselves, can choose not to, of course).
From Wikipedia, this is when each version of Windows became (or will become) unsupported by Microsoft:
Tying that to the details in the existing answer:
So it looks like VS2012 is the first version that will drop support for an OS which itself will still supported for at least another year. Assuming all these dates are correct (I haven’t double-checked them; did this mostly for my own curiousity).