Install on Windows XP
Asked by MikeL:

How to install SourceTree on Windows XP?


Answers:
author: pschaff01
body: Hi Mike,

Currently, as stated on the download link of [Atlassian's Source Tree for Windows](http://sourcetreeapp.com/), the Windows release is only compatible with Windows 7+.

Cheers,

Pietro T. Schaff

comments: author: MikeL
body: So I guess, you simply treat older Windows versions as unimportant?


author: KieranA
body: Support for Windows XP is officially ending by Microsoft themselves [as noted here](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/end-support-help). Furthermore, Windows 7/8 usage is [going up significantly and outweighs that of XP in most cases](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems). We'd love to be able to support everyone but in doing so would require significant sacrifices in what we can deliver due to OS constraints as well as the consumption of time in doing so.


author: MikeL
body: I guess, it is rather a technical constraint, because *you* decided to take a .Net framework version as base which is not compatible to Windows XP.


author: stevestreeting
body: We gave XP support a low priority before even deciding on the tech. As it happened the threading models available in newer versions of .Net that had dropped XP support cemented that decision.

FWIW the low priority initially assigned to XP wasn't (just) because we dislike old stuff ;) It was supported by stats - for example on Bitbucket, XP users account for less than 10% of the Windows user base, and that will only shrink as time goes on. If supporting XP would limit us going forward (which it turned out it would), it just wasn't worth it.


author: Irene Moser
body: It is your choice to decide that you won't support XP. I accept this. What I don't accept is that it is now installed on my XP machine. Please point me to the instructions how to uninstall it. It does not show up in Add/Remove Programs.


author: ResonanceDesigns
body: Just use SmartGit =)


author: Irene Moser
body: It is your choice to decide that you won't support XP. I accept this. What I don't accept is that it is now installed on my XP machine. Please point me to the instructions how to uninstall it. It does not show up in Add/Remove Programs.


author: S B
body: We recently converted from StarTeam to Git with some disruption. We need a good GUI like SourceTree. My main development machine runs WinXP because -- why upgrade if it works fine to compile and test Java code? Constant upgrading drains funds and slows operations. I could upgrade to Win 7+, but probably makes no sense on this older hardware which supports development fine even if it isn't the latest greatest gaming machine. So I'd have to upgrade whole machine, lots of migration, cleanup, etc. in middle of work cycle, which is very risky if deadlines loom.

So I'd just like a tool that runs on Win XP for now. Hard to recommend SourceTree for the team while we still have XP machines on line. We'll see though, if it really is head-and-shoulders above the rest, might be worth it.


author: Arah Leonard
body: Just chiming in with my 2 cents: I found this to be a greatly dissapointing decision by Atlassian that Source Tree not support Windows XP. I mean Source Tree on Windows 7 is already incredibly slow and behaves fairly goofy at times, but to not be able to use it on my Windows XP test VMs, that was the last straw for me. I just moved on to a different product in spite of most of my use cases being on Windows 7. It wasn't worth the hassle of dealing with. When you're not the only game in town, you really can't affort to annoy customers. There are other *better* options. Like it or not 1) XP isn't dead yet and 2) XP will not be *completely* dead for many more years yet. There will always be slow-to-change customers with some ancient box in a corner. And always be XP downgrades, or run in a VM or some form of compatibility mode. *Some businesses*want to keep their customers, so are forced to continue to suppor them. Atlassian is just clearly not one of those businesses. In that they provide products to software engineers, the very people who will need ancient support for many years to come, this is a disappointing business model to see chosen. But I'm sure even _if_ Atlassian realized their grave mistake and wanted to change now, it's just simply too late. Their path is set. Sorry you had to lose me as a customer.

comments: author: Mike Friedrich
body: ...and not to forget the embedded devices based on XP.  
Microsoft officially supports Windows Embedded Standard 2009 at least till 2024!  
Especially projects developing in this segment might need to use XP (like we do).


author: Arah Leonard
body: That's a good point. Because its software is so rarely updated, I'd almost forgotten that one of our products is a kiosk type system running on XP embedded. (Though I still think we should have used Linux on that one.) XP is far from dead. Software engineers will be supporting XP for many years to come. But not Atlassian. I guess they just don't want our business.


author: KieranA
body: Hey Arah,

It wasn't a quick decision to decide not to support Windows XP, a lot of thought went behind it. Ultimately it came down to market share, and Windows XP has dropped so quickly for the amount of work needed to support it would outweigh the benefits.

Just to put it into perspective, in October of 2013 the market share was 33% Windows XP (it dropped by 3% in 2013 alone). Out of that 33% let's give a very optimistic guess that 10% of those were developers leaving us with 3.3%. Now out of those let's take how many of them would be using SourceTree. The numbers are extremely low, basically.

Whilst Microsoft are providing support for it, it's largely in part because so many people have ditched it that there's barely any support left on Microsoft's part due to how quickly it's fading out.

We would honestly *love* to support everyone, but to do so for the outcome to be over the next year or two no-one using it made no sense.

Hope that helps


author: Arah Leonard
body: Why would spouting marketing statistics to a customer whom you refuse to support "help" anyone? :\\ That's an awfully unusual perspective to have.

Besides, it's not like we live under rocks. Even *Microsoft* was already forced to admit XP was too commonly used to kill it off when they first wanted to and had to extend its life after roaring customer complaints. So I would dare say that if *anyone* were to have seen the XP writing on the wall well in advance, both in terms of death and in terms of *undeath*, of many long years of support to come, it'd be the professional software engineers and/or IT support gurus who groaned at the pace of adoption in the business sector in a period of economic decline.

But far more to the relevency at this point, explaining your business strategy doesn't change the fact that you *had* customers (and potential customers) that needed XP but your business strategy was to ignore them. Explaining your decision doesn't change the fact that here are customers who have needs and you don't provide for them. That was your choice, not ours. You've forced us to move on to other products from other companies where our needs *are* met so that at the end of the day we can get the job done.

I'm just one of the rare customers who bothers sending in bug reports, or in this case, letting you know why you lost my business.

It's not about you helping me. *I* am trying to "help" *you* by explaining why you've lost my business. As you have clearly lost that of others as well. Obviously there's no "help" that Altassian can provide to people like me who, for better or worse, still need to support Windows XP in some way, even if it is a very small part of our business.


author: Mike Friedrich
body: @Kieran

I understand your thinking behind the arguments, but i believe your calculation is wrong.

If you count XP developers only, you need to compare them with Win7 developers too. I strongly assume not every Vista/Win7/Win8 machine is a developer machine. You need to apply the same 10% guess to those systems too, or come up with another statistic proving that development on XP is not so common anymore (and I would not argue with that).

I would compare 3.3% against 6.7% or may be 10% (or whatever the percentage is for other development machines). I think, it's not as bad as you indicate.

By the way: If this is right: [](http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp)<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp>

9.9% Win8 / 56.7% Win7 / 12.4% WinXP  
still more than Win8 :)


author: Mitul Doshi
body: when will Windows help/guide will be available?


author: Jukka Hervala
body: As a workaround we use xp in virtual machine and share a folder from host computer (Windows 7) to quest computer. That way we can maintain old products in XP environment and still use SourceTree for Git.

comments: author: Mike Friedrich
body: thats not working for us as we need we also need dongles and other (firewire-)hardware, and thats not usable/accessible inside a virtual machine.


author: Mike Friedrich
body: Can you please make the installer refuse to install on XP? It cannot be uninstalled.

Thanks.