The program worked fine on the old version, and nothing new was added*.Release the new version, and deal with any Bugs that arise (not working properly on different OS builds etc).Īnd all of this would provide little benefit to the end users:.Build up a version of the program for release, including documentation (Release Notes), Strategies for dissemination of the new version etc.Find and fix/workaround any Bugs related to the new version of the framework.Upgrade and individually test each place where the new framework has new functionality, to ensure that nothing has changed or broken as a result of the upgrade.Sometimes they might have to restructure entire sections of code to workaround the newer APIs. Find all the missing/broken references to the old framework, and upgrade & replace them.

Learn how things changed in the new version.So in order for a development company to upgrade a program to a newer framework, they would need to: It looks for DrawObjectToScreen(), doesn't find it, and throws an error. Which takes an object, and a Point, representing the pixel coordinates (x,y) for the object.īut an update to the framework comes out, the above method is removed and replaced by: Draw(Object o, Point p) They've either been moved, renamed, or changed drastically so that the result is not what the program was expecting.įor example, say a game relied on a function: DrawObjectToScreen(Object o, Point p) What this means is that sometimes when older programs attempt to access features in the newer frameworks, those features aren't there.

Of course, being programs & libraries themselves, they get updated regularly with bug fixes, new features, improvements to the performance of older functions, and sometimes (especially major updates) a restructuring and rebuilding of the entire package itself. DirectX for example, is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video. things which every program needs to do, but don't need to be reinvented/rewritten every time you write a new program. If the game requires that version of the library, it won't run (properly) without it.įrameworks like DirectX, OpenGL etc are (basically) just collections of common functions i.e. Short answer: Yes, It's fine to install it.

Directx 9 windows 8.1