Over the last couple of years, it’s been very exciting to see people developing and deploying LiveCode apps on a amazingly wide variety of platforms and operating systems, from Pentium 3 servers running CentOS 5 to retina iMacs running the OS X El Capitan.
Today, we’re updating our policy for platform support to clarify and streamline it.  We’re doing this to:
- help LiveCode app developers make good “system requirements” recommendations to their users
- explain which platforms we use to test LiveCode features before making each release
- make it feasible to provide a very high quality LiveCode Support service by clarifying which platforms are covered by the service
A platform is a combination of computer hardware and a particular version of a particular operating system environment. For example, “OS X 10.10 x86” is the Yosemite version of OS X running on an Intel-compatible 32-bit processor.
LiveCode supports 5 operating systems at the moment: Windows, Android, Linux, OS X and iOS.  These all have differing vendor support, versioning systems, third-party ecosystems, and uptake by the LiveCode developer and user community.  This means there’s no “one size fits all” support policy that can simply cover them all, so we’ve tailored our new platform support policy to suit each of them. I’ll go through them in turn.
Windows is still the most widely-deployed operating system in the world, and there are more LiveCode developers and end-users using Windows than any other operating system.
LiveCode is supported on Windows when it is running on x86 (32 bit) and x86-64 (64 bit) hardware.
The oldest version of Windows that LiveCode currently supports is Windows XP, which is deployed on approximately 10% of Windows computers. Â Microsoft have now dropped all support for both Windows XP and Windows Vista, which is making it increasingly difficult and costly to support LiveCode for those versions of Windows.
In LiveCode 8.2, we will end official support for versions of Windows that are not supported by Microsoft. Â This will include ending support for Windows XP and Windows Vista.
| LiveCode 8.1 | LiveCode 8.2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Windows XP | Yes | No |
| Windows Vista | Yes | No |
| Windows 7 | Yes | Yes |
| Windows 8 | Yes | Yes |
| Windows 8.1 | Yes | Yes |
| Windows 10 | Yes | Yes |
One of the biggest challenges when deciding how to support Linux users is the bewilderingly large variety of different Linux distributions. Â Some always have the very latest versions of every program; some only update programs when they have to. Â Some distributions are designed to run in a massive cluster in a datacentre, and some are designed for children’s laptops.
We decided to base our Linux support policy on specific versions of specific Linux distributions. Â We looked at lots of factors when designing the policy, including the quality of support provided by the distributions, how widely used they are, and their release cycles. Â We also looked at the rate of change in Linux development tools and libraries.
For the LiveCode IDE and standalones, we decided to provide official support for the Ubuntu and Fedora distributions. Â This includes:
- the latest release of Ubuntu, and versions of Ubuntu with Long Term Support that have been released in the last 4 years
- the current and next-to-current releases of Fedora
Because Linux is so widely used for LiveCode Server deployments, we decided to provide official server-only support for Debian and CentOS, two distributions widely used on Linux servers. This includes versions of Debian stable and CentOS that receive official vendor support and were released in the last 4 years.
We will currently only provide official support for x86 (32 bit) and x86-64 (64 bit) Linux.
| Desktop | Server | |
|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu 16.04 | Yes | Yes |
| Ubuntu 14.04 | Yes | Yes |
| Fedora 24 | Yes | Yes |
| Fedora 23 | Yes | Yes |
| Debian 8 (Jessie) | No | Yes |
| Debian 7 (Wheezy) | No | Yes |
| CentOS 7 | No | Yes |
Android is the most widely-used mobile operating system in the world. Apps built with LiveCode currently run on all versions of Android from 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) onwards. Â However, certain features may not be available, depending on the specific version of Android being used and the device on which it’s running.
Currently, we compile LiveCode in a way that lets it run on ARM v6 hardware or newer.
When we were considering which versions of Android should be officially supported, we looked at how widely used different versions of Android and device hardware were used. Â Versions of Android older than 4.1 (Jelly Bean), and ARM v6 hardware, are now quite rare. Â Dropping support for these older Android devices will allow us to make LiveCode considerably faster, by taking advantage of newer hardware features.
We will drop support for ARM v6 hardware and the oldest versions of Android in LiveCode 8.2.
Note: Official support will be extended to new versions of Android when they are released for general availability.  Preview and beta releases are not officially supported.
| LiveCode 8.1 | LiveCode 8.2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Gingerbread (2.3.3–2.3.7) | Yes | No |
| Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) | Yes | No |
| Jelly Bean (4.1–4.3) | Yes | Yes |
| KitKat (4.4) | Yes | Yes |
| Lollipop (5.0–5.1) | Yes | Yes |
| Marshmallow (6.0) | Yes | Yes |
| LiveCode 8.1 | LiveCode 8.2 | |
|---|---|---|
| ARM v6 | Yes | No |
| ARM v7 | Yes | Yes |
| ARM v8 (ARM64) | Yes | Yes |
Apple’s MacOS X operating system is very popular with LiveCode users thanks to LiveCode’s HyperTalk ancestry.  It’s also the only operating system that can be used to build iOS apps to run on Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices.
Apple currently provides security updates and other support for MacOS X 10.9 and later, and provides upgrades to newer versions of MacOS for all customers.
In LiveCode 8.2, we will end official support for versions of MacOS that are not officially supported by Apple.
Note:Â Official support will be extended to new versions of MacOS when Apple releases them for general availability. Â Preview and beta releases are not officially supported.
| LiveCode 8.1 | LiveCode 8.2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Snow Leopard (10.6) | Yes | No |
| Lion (10.7) | Yes | No |
| Mountain Lion (10.8) | Yes | No |
| Mavericks (10.9) | Yes | Yes |
| Yosemite (10.10) | Yes | Yes |
| El Capitan (10.11) | Yes | Yes |
The iOS operating system is used on Apple’s iPad and iPhone mobile devices. Â iOS app development is extremely popular among LiveCode developers.
The Apple App Store only accepts iOS apps if they are compiled with support for one of a few, most recent versions of iOS.  Currently, LiveCode has official support only for these versions of the iOS device operating system.  In the past, however, there has also been official support for much older versions of the iOS simulator (which is included with Apple’s Xcode development environment).
We will continue to officially support all versions of iOS that are supported by the App Store. However, in LiveCode 8.2 we will end official support for older versions of iOS simulator.
Note:Â Official support will be extended to new versions of iOSÂ when Apple releases them for general availability. Â Preview and beta releases are not officially supported.
| LiveCode 8.1 | LiveCode 8.2 | |
|---|---|---|
| iOS 6.1 | Simulator | No |
| iOS 7.1 | Simulator | No |
| iOS 8.2 | Yes | Yes |
| iOS 9.2 | Yes | Yes |
| iOS 9.3 | Yes | Yes |
As you can see, LiveCode has official support for a very large variety of platforms!
But wait; there is more! There are several platforms where LiveCode isn’t officially supported, but can be made to run quite well, such as on the Xubuntu variant of Ubuntu Linux, or on ARMv6 Linux distributions running on tiny Raspberry Pi computers.
And what if changes are needed to make LiveCode work on your favourite platform? LiveCode is open source software, and the core dev team will always accept reasonable patches to make it easier to compile and use LiveCode on a wide variety of platforms.
In the future, we will try to ensure that we always clearly indicate what platforms you can get official support for, and we will soon be updating the support area of the website to make this information easier to find.  We’ll do our best to give as much notice as possible when a particular platform is reaching end-of-life.
If you have any questions about our platform support policy, please contact our support team.
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