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by squeek502 611 days ago
I think everything labeled 'miscompilation' could be fixed without breaking backwards compatibility, since triggering them always leads to an unusable/broken .res file. No clue how likely it is they'll be fixed, though.
1 comments

You're assuming that anything will notice if the .res file is broken, though. It might add a .res because "that's what Windows programs are supposed to do", or "only old versions of the program actually used that", or "everybody knows it crashes if you use that menu option, so don't use it."

But the build still depends on the compilation of resources succeeding.

For the miscompilations, the fix wouldn't add a new compile error. Instead, rc.exe would just start doing the right thing in certain scenarios, so previously broken things would start working. For example, padding bytes that were previously missing would get properly added.

It's always theoretically possible that someone, somewhere is somehow relying on such a miscompilation, but for many of the ones detailed in the article, it seems extraordinarily unlikely.