Panther tickets

[David Osguthorpe]

On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 03:43:19AM -0600, Emmanuel Hainry wrote:
> 
> 
> You should also drop bugfixing for anything not macosx (linux, bsd,
> puredarwin). Jordan's plan would mean you can remove a lot of code from
> base: why are there different gcc default, different x11prefix? Why
> should you care that some people use powerpc architectures, their
> machines should already be dead (mine is) so only supporting the next
> macosx release should be okay.
> 

I really get concerned when I see statements like this - so much that I start
thinking maybe forking macports to eg. linuxports is needed - or maybe back
to darwinports

I only switched to Tiger early last year (does nobody remember how unstable Tiger was
compared to Panther) - and it still doesnt have a feature
I was using under Panther - that is a working kernel extension for reading and writing
ext2/3 filesystems - my Pismo machine (came with OS 9) is still running under Linux
so life time can be a lot longer than yours  (my NexT black slab still booted last time I tried)
- Ive had a delay for a year or so from Darwinports/Macports because of the
Darwinports/Macports name change and didnt want to destroy
my working setup with the name change - Im sure the update procedure would not have changed the
targets of the symbolic links I was using under /opt/local/var/db/dports
Only reason why Im getting back now is because I recently got a new machine which
of course is now Intel so nothing from any previous powerpc machine was useful so I had no
option but a fresh install - and Im working through re-implementing my various fixups to base
(I still dont have a working reading/writing ext2/3 file reader - Im using fuse on OSX
but neither of the 2 ext2/3 fuse modules look reliable enough for writing at the moment
- and yes I dual boot linux so I need access to ext2/ext3 file systems)

One if the things that I like about Darwinports/Macports was the encapsulation of the
building of open source projects - I do a lot of downloading software and adding my own
personalizations and Ive found the Portfile approach relatively easy to adapt for this
(yes Ive made my own SPEC files for rpms and Portfiles seemed much simpler to the Fink
Makefiles which Ive looked at and what Ive seen of dpkgs so far for Ubuntu doesnt seem easy)
so Im seriously thinking about using "LinuxPorts" on the Linux side to control 
software I might download and add changes to

By keeping to very basic generic Unix tools/options/commands you can solve the above
problems and keep Darwinports/Macports working for as many systems as possible

David