Re: [ntdev] Driver Verifier - Code Integrity Check

While it is clear to me that Peter let his normal mild-mannered persona slip when writing this post, I doubt that you will attract additional ire by reiterating the need to support obsolete technology using obsolete tools. I have recently modified code that connected to an IBM mainframe service obsoleted in 1980 something (strings encoded in EBCIDIC etc.) and I certainly needed to assemble an interesting tool chain to make that work.

But I believe that the thrust of his argument is that none of us can abnegate our professional responsibility to remain informed and to continue our professional development. We can certainly disagree with choices made by Microsoft and other companies, but those disagreements should be based on sound reasoning rather than simply complaint about a change - in other words ignorance is no excuse.

Sent from Surface Pro

From: Don Burn
Sent: ‎Tuesday‎, ‎July‎ ‎14‎, ‎2015 ‎2‎:‎20‎ ‎PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List

At the risk of pissing off Peter again, I did want to respond to two points on this discussion.

First there is a mention of using the latest tools, and how you can build Windows XP drivers with the latest tools. The rule I always use is to “Use the latest WDK that supports the earliest Windows version needed”. Now, yes with care one can use a Visual Studio based WDK to build with XP, but Microsoft does not officially support this model. I find this very similar to the early C++ in the kernel arguments, this list spent a lot of time arguing whether it was good or bad, and the final answer was never resolved till Microsoft added real support.

At present I build projects with all the WDK’s from Windows 7 onward, the specific WDK is dependent on the client. There are people who insist on XP, I may think they are wrong but their customers are still using XP. There are people who have me build with VS2012/Win8 WDK, not because of the drivers, but because the rest of their software is currently wedded to VS2012 and they don’t want to mix the two versions of Visual Studio. Mostly, I use VS2013/Win8.1 and will shift to VS2015/Win10 ASAP. Unless, I want to tell a lot of my customers to go elsewhere, I will still be using Windows 7 WDK for a good long time.

The other point was the comparison to the Windows 10 Driver Signing. I think this is a poor comparison since almost from the second that Microsoft announced this at WinHEC, OSR and NTDEV have been on top of it. Search for “Windows 10 driver signing” and you get a ton of relevant hits , including the OSR Blog on the day it was announced. This was my real problem with the Verifier change, not that it happened, but that it was not highlighted to the community. At one point additions to the Verifier were a “big thing” and were “shouted from the roof tops”. I’m hoping Microsoft will go back to this model of communication; driver development is poorer without it.

Don Burn

Windows Driver Consulting

Website: http://www.windrvr.com


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