Port trees for specific versions of MacOS

[Mojca Miklavec]

Dear Ken,

On 28 March 2018 at 18:01, Ken Cunningham wrote:
> In <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/50448#comment:17> Rene mentions the idea of generating port tree overlays for specific versions of MacOS, to preserve compatible versions of ports which have moved beyond the capabilities of that OS.
>
> I'd just like to mention that I've been working on this on my own for a while now, and have such trees in place, and available for contributions.  Anyone interested, feel free to suggest or contribute, please.
>
> It was always my hope this might someday become part of MacPorts, or at least suggested for users.
>
> Best,
>
> Ken
>
> Tiger:
> <https://github.com/kencu/TigerPorts>
>
> Leopard:
> <https://github.com/kencu/LeopardPorts>
>
> SnowLeopard:
> <https://github.com/kencu/SnowLeopardPorts>
>
> Lion:
> <https://github.com/kencu/LionPorts>

I've seen these before and I'm still impressed by the amount of effort
put into it.

A few problems I see with this approach:
(a) What happens when a dependency of one of those ports is changed.
Unless you have some CI system in place for this to tell you that a
port needs a revbump at least, you won't know.
(b) Problems like those you mentioned: a dependent port from the main
repository would disable a dependency just because it doesn't know it
could have been built.

This approach can work reliably only with sufficient man-hours from
users contributing and/or at least a number of tools to help you
monitor dependencies and dependent ports to at least remind you when
to update something, but ideally also running automated builds on
regular basis.

(Keeping a fork would be even more demanding to maintain.)

Mojca