On the desktop, most individuals use the official HTML and JavaScript-based shopper for Discord in both a browser or a still-smells-like-a-browser Electron bundle. But what if there was a manner to make use of a third-party shopper and even run it on Home windows XP, Home windows 95, and NT 3.1? That is precisely what [iDontProgramInCpp] did with their Discord Messenger challenge.
Happily, as an internet ‘app’ the Discord API is instantly accessible and so they don’t appear to be in a rush to ban third-party shoppers. Nevertheless it did require a bit of labor so as to add newer variations of TLS encryption to Home windows XP and older. Happily OpenSSL nonetheless helps these older platforms, so this was not a significant hurdle and Home windows XP fortunately ran this new Discord shopper. That left porting to older Home windows variations.
Many of the problem lies in writing shims for API calls that don’t exist on these older platforms when backporting software program from Home windows XP to older Home windows variations, and GCC (MinGW) had for use as a substitute of MSVC, however this additionally was a comparatively minor element. Lastly, Home windows NT 3.1 was picked because the final problem for Discord Messenger, which bumped into MSVCRT runtime points and required backporting options to the NT 3.1 model that was nonetheless a part of the OS again then.
[MattKC] covers the challenge in a current video, in addition to the AeroChat shopper which targets Home windows Reside Messenger followers. Hopefully the API that enables these tasks to function doesn’t get locked down, as third-party shoppers like these convey their very own distinctive benefits to the Discord ecosystem.
