Announce discontinuation of MacOSX support for versions 10.4 and older (issue 2271)

Announce discontinuation of MacOSX support for versions 10.4 and older (issue 2271)

[Graham Percival, 2012-02-10 19:11:01]

I have mixed feelings about this patch.  Given that adding osx 10.4 ppc support
is a two-line patch -- smaller than this one! -- it feels a bit weird to move
ahead with this.  However, there is clearly no desire to actually create that
two-line patch, so I guess that removing support is the thing to do.

As well as changes.itely, the website macosx download page needs to be modified.

http://codereview.appspot.com/5653057/diff/1/Documentation/changes.tely
File Documentation/changes.tely (right):

http://codereview.appspot.com/5653057/diff/1/Documentation/changes.tely#newco...
Documentation/changes.tely:285: lack of interest and resources, support for
versions 10.4 and older has
Make this a new @item, at the top of the list.  The way it is right now, it
looks as though Christian was the person to discontinue osx 10.4 support, which
is extremely misleading.  He told us how to fix it.

[dak, 2012-02-10 19:16:55]

graham@percival-music.ca writes:

> I have mixed feelings about this patch.  Given that adding osx 10.4 ppc
> support is a two-line patch -- smaller than this one! -- it feels a bit
> weird to move ahead with this.  However, there is clearly no desire to
> actually create that two-line patch, so I guess that removing support is
> the thing to do.

I have no clue at all about the actual work involved, but it sounded to
me like it also involved considerable effort in compiling, testing and
uploading things, and then wait for feedback.  If we claim something to
be supported, it is not enough to say "we think it may work".

If that two-line patch possibly causes us to have to reiterate several
times before OSX 10.7 gets working again, it is quite more expensive
than "2 lines" sounds like.  If there is no such risk, one can do the
patch, declare the platform "unsupported", and go on without testing.

Again: I don't have a clue about the involved work.  But if it isn't
happening, there is no point in never releasing something for those
platforms which we _do_ actively support.

-- 
David Kastrup

[Graham Percival, 2012-02-10 19:33:25]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 08:16:53PM +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
> graham@percival-music.ca writes:
> 
> > However, there is clearly no desire to
> > actually create that two-line patch, so I guess that removing support is
> > the thing to do.
>
> Again: I don't have a clue about the involved work.  But if it isn't
> happening, there is no point in never releasing something for those
> platforms which we _do_ actively support.

Agreed; if you fix the other comments in my review, I'll give it a
LGTM.  I'm just giving one more chance to somebody to care about
this.

- Graham