I recently installed Visual Studio 2019 and found out that it only supports compiling for Windows XP via legacy toolsets from older compilers. Yes, that is correct: Microsoft has finally dropped XP support from their current line of compiler tools.
This has an important implication: Going forward and using newer C++ language features in the source means that none of these will be backported to work with the XP compatible toolset.
Checking the database from the 3.5 survey. The survey contains 31480 distinct users not requiring the vintage build.
Of these 31480 users there were 41 users on Windows XP, meaning we are left with roughly 0.13% of our users on Windows XP.
Under these circumstances there is little point to continue XP support, the user base is simply too small to justify shutting ourselves off from future C++ versions and having to install a large package of legacy build tools and SDKs, so with the next release Windows XP support will be dropped from the official releases and no attempts will be made anymore to keep the code compatible with such older toolsets.