- Mar 15, 2014
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I downloaded the most recent version of TortoiseSVN but eventually discovered that they'd dropped support for WindowsXP with the release of v1.9 literally only last month. I use a WinXP laptop for retro gaming so it is normal for me still to use that for related purposes which is what this was.
Tortoise host older XP compatible versions so I downloaded the last version of those and annoyngly got an error message I assumed, wrongly, was another XP incompatibility issue.
So I went looking for even older versions at FileHippo and after many similar downloads working my way back eventually found that any TortoiseSVN version before v1.8.0 would install without any problem.
It was then I looked more closely at the error message I'd been getting with the supposedly XP friendly v1.8 series:-
"This installation package cannot be installed by the Windows Installer Service. You must install a Windows Service pack that contains a newer version of the Windows Installer Service."
My assumption before was that as my WinXP SP3 is fully updated this meant it was WinXP SP3 incompatible and there had been some mistake about the TortoiseSVN version support.
But I Googled about it anyway and discovered what it actually meant was the Windows Installer v3.1, presumably what is included with SP3, was incompatible and I needed to update that.
But hang on, the newest XP compatible version is v4.5 which has been available since mid-2008 apparently ie. long before support for XP ended.
So my question is why wasn't the Windows Installer updated to v4.5 automatically/available through Windows Updates at the time, since and even now?
My XP installation was and is fully updated with all the priority and optional Windows Updates but they didn't think to include the Windows Installer update amongst that lot. Why?
It would have saved quite a bit of time for me over the last 24hrs if they had.
There are also questions of less importance eg. why, five years after release and with all previous TortoiseSVN versions being quite happy to use XP SP3's default v3.1 Windows Installer they decided, 17 days after the previous release, to stop supporting it without warning.
There is no mention of this system requirements update that I can see in the original extensive technical information and changelogs FileHippo also makes available for every version archived.
Tortoise host older XP compatible versions so I downloaded the last version of those and annoyngly got an error message I assumed, wrongly, was another XP incompatibility issue.
So I went looking for even older versions at FileHippo and after many similar downloads working my way back eventually found that any TortoiseSVN version before v1.8.0 would install without any problem.
It was then I looked more closely at the error message I'd been getting with the supposedly XP friendly v1.8 series:-
"This installation package cannot be installed by the Windows Installer Service. You must install a Windows Service pack that contains a newer version of the Windows Installer Service."
My assumption before was that as my WinXP SP3 is fully updated this meant it was WinXP SP3 incompatible and there had been some mistake about the TortoiseSVN version support.
But I Googled about it anyway and discovered what it actually meant was the Windows Installer v3.1, presumably what is included with SP3, was incompatible and I needed to update that.
But hang on, the newest XP compatible version is v4.5 which has been available since mid-2008 apparently ie. long before support for XP ended.
So my question is why wasn't the Windows Installer updated to v4.5 automatically/available through Windows Updates at the time, since and even now?
My XP installation was and is fully updated with all the priority and optional Windows Updates but they didn't think to include the Windows Installer update amongst that lot. Why?
It would have saved quite a bit of time for me over the last 24hrs if they had.
There are also questions of less importance eg. why, five years after release and with all previous TortoiseSVN versions being quite happy to use XP SP3's default v3.1 Windows Installer they decided, 17 days after the previous release, to stop supporting it without warning.
There is no mention of this system requirements update that I can see in the original extensive technical information and changelogs FileHippo also makes available for every version archived.
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