Adopt windows version range >=0.54, <=0.57

[cart]

windows is a "heavy" crate. Duplicate windows versions in a tree can add precious seconds to compile times (or even minutes by some Bevy user reports). On the Bevy side, we are trying to ensure that windows is only compiled once. We also believe it is in the ecosystem's best interest (and in the interest of crate owners that consume windows) to align their versioning with the rest of ecosystem. Therefore, I would like to encourage crate owners to adopt the following approach to windows crate usage:

1. Adopt "range versioning" for windows instead of locking to a specific version.
2. Before adding a new version to the range, test that each previous version in the range still compiles.
3. Only remove old versions from the range when absolutely necessary. Try your hardest to ensure that your version support aligns with other ecosystem crates.

We've picked 0.54 as a baseline because breaking API changes were made to use Rust Results instead of HRESULT.

I have personally tested that cpal compiles with 0.54, 0.56 (0.55 does not exist), and 0.57.

[Ralith]

I think this needs CI checking compatibility with the oldest listed version to not be a liability.

[BD103]

I think this needs CI checking compatibility with the oldest listed version to not be a liability.

The windows-test job could be modified with a matrix to test this. I know its possible on to resolve the minimum versions of all dependencies on nightly, though I don't know if you can resolve just a single dependency. (Perhaps you need to modify the lockfile or patch in the version?)

[est31]

These ranges are a good idea to the too many windows versions problem, so good catch!

It's kinda outsourcing the problem of checking for compatibility to the community, but still better than having multiple versions of windows in your crate graph.

I agree with @Ralith, there should be CI checks for all of the supported windows versions, and we'd probably still only want to support a limited amount to keep the number of CI checked versions down (but ideally 3-4 different versions would sufficiently avoid duplication). You'd probably do something like cargo update --precise to get the needed windows version.

[BD103]

You'd probably do something like cargo update --precise to get the needed windows version.

I tried using cargo update --precise, but I had some issues with duplicate dependencies. The one solution that worked for me was using patch files, though I'm sure Regex would be more stable.

For reference, here's my demo that automatically tests windows versions for accesskit.

[JMS55]

Are there any blockers for this? Bevy currently has 4(!) different versions of windows in it's dependency tree, with cpal contributing the oldest. It should be fairly straightforward to merge this and publish a new version of cpal + rodio, no?

[est31]

as I've said, we should add some way in CI to test for all windows versions.