Access to machines with old OS versions/architectures, like 10.4, 10.5, ... ppc

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 8:54 PM, Clemens Lang wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> I was wondering if there was any chance/interest to set up a bunch of
>> computers with different architectures and OS versions installed (but
>> mainly setups like 10.4/PPC, 10.4/i386, 10.5/PPC, 10.6/x86_64) so that
>> a few trusted developers could have ssh access to those machines in
>> order to be able to test and fix issues on those machines every now
>> and then.
>
> I have a PowerMac G5 next to my desk that is intended for this very
> purpose (or as buildbot, but I'm not sure there really is a need for it
> anymore). I'm not sure what the electricity bill on that would be, but
> I could certainly provide the connectivity.
>
> I didn't set it up yet and I currently have no place in my apartment
> where I could leave it running 24/7, but since I'll be moving in a
> couple of months that problem might solve itself.

If you are saving if for that exact purpose, it would be excellent if
it could be set up, even if just experimentally (waiting for a few
months isn't a problem).

>> Is there anyone else who would find such a setup useful?
>
> I'd mainly use it to test for base development. But then again, I think
> these machines are getting less and less important, and we might just
> go ahead and ignore them in the near future.

Yes, the machines are certainly less and less important.
But on the other hand every now and then some projects show up for
which I would bet nobody ever had the time and motivation to do:

http://www.csl.cornell.edu/~fang/sw/llvm/
http://www.mistydemeo.com/?p=69

As Leopard and PPC become more and more outdated, there is also less
and less binary software available for them and projects like
Fink/MacPorts/Tigerbrew are the only options to keep the machines
usable at least to some extent.

It certainly doesn't make sense to spend an enormous amount of effort
trying to fix every bug reported/encountered for PPC. But some
maintainers might consider it a fun challenge to fix some trivial
issues if they had access to hardware. Having such a machine available
for ssh would give them a chance.

> As for i386/x86_64 boxes,
> it might be simpler to virtualize those.

For newer OSes any solution would do. One useful feature would be to
have a really fast machine for testing ports that might need a few
hours to build or for testing universal builds. The differences
between 10.7-10.9 are usually not extreme and there is still a
reasonable number of testers around. A very nice setup could consist
of one machine running the latest os natively + one machine with
virtual boxes for 10.6-10.(n-1) provided that someone would be willing
to set everything up. That would require relatively new hardware.

Mojca