Different dmgs for different felines

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Dec 28, 2007, at 10:11, Rainer Müller wrote:

> Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>> Why is it again that we need separate dmgs for separate OS  
>> releases at
>> all? Why don't we just have a single universal dmg, with the PowerPC
>> part built with the 10.3.9 SDK and the Intel part built with the  
>> 10.4u
>> SDK, and everyone's happy? Isn't that the whole point of universal
>> binaries and those SDKs?
>>
>> Frankly, that's how I'd like ports built too, when the +universal  
>> binary
>> is selected. But that can be a separate topic for another day.
>
> As +universal is not the default (a very good thing IMHO), why  
> should we
> distribute the MacPorts base system as universal?
> I don't like these universal stuff at all, for most people it is
> occupying disk space for no actual use. Most people will use one
> MacPorts installation on one system - which is obviously one  
> architecture.

Rainer, would you prefer for us to distribute 5 different disk images  
of MacPorts then -- Panther PowerPC, Tiger PowerPC, Tiger Intel,  
Leopard PowerPC, Leopard Intel?

Apple wants developers to make universal binaries so that users don't  
need to care what kind of processor they have. Other Mac developers  
are making universal binaries. We should too. And we already do. We  
just have separate images for Panther, Tiger and Leopard right now.  
And I'd like to unify that as well so that we end up with a single  
downloadable for our software, like most other Mac developers already  
have.

We already had several cases where users downloaded the Leopard  
MacPorts disk image, installed it on Tiger, and of course it didn't  
work. So distributing a single disk image which works everywhere is  
simpler for users.


As for +universal variants in ports, most users won't need to select  
this variant themselves, but once we get to distributing compiled  
binaries of ports, which is a long-term goal, I think we would want  
to distribute universal binaries so that we only have to manage a  
single collection of binaries, and not multiple collections, one for  
each architecture. Anyway we don't really need to debate anymore  
*whether* we should have universal support. We already do, and I see  
no reason why it should be removed; rather, I see reasons why it  
should be kept and improved.