What should a port do if 10.4 is not supported any more?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On May 29, 2012, at 09:10, Jeremy Lavergne wrote:

>> Use of the current ports tree assumes use of the current version of MacPorts. We don't support use of earlier versions of MacPorts.
> 
> Well we've seen that not be the case when things from the future versions are sent out too early. Usually this is mitigated by wrapping with exists/info checks: when it's available it gets used else a workaround/old way of doing things.

Yes, we do follow that strategy for a short period of time following the release of a new version of MacPorts, to allow users time to realize they should run "sudo port selfupdate".


> Would this not work for supporting portfiles in old MacPorts, even if not "supported"?

I see no reason to trouble ourselves with reintroducing Panther support at this extremely late stage; that would be the only reason to follow this strategy on a continuing basis, since the current version of MacPorts works on Tiger and up.

Users running old versions of MacPorts should expect to use correspondingly old versions of the portfiles, which can be obtained from our Subversion repository or from the tarball time capsules we publish.


>> MacPorts 2.1.1 still works fine on Tiger and up.
> 
> We're just no longer distributing installers for it? The site indicates Leopard is the only legacy platform with installers, implying Tiger can't install MacPorts.

I'm not really clear on why we ever bother making new installers, since running the installer for any version of MacPorts automatically runs selfupdate, which will update the user to the current version of MacPorts. So any Tiger user can just run the MacPorts 2.0.3 installer, which will, at its conclusion, run selfupdate, which will update to 2.1.1.