tenfourfox - should it be in the MacPorts repo?

[Christopher Jones]

Hi,

Being ’niche’ in itself is no reason to not include something in MacPorts, so that shouldn’t be a concern. We have plenty of ‘niche’ ports already, which is partly what makes MacPorts better than the alternatives ;) 

If the new ports build ‘normally’ like any other, then why not have them in the main repo. There are plenty other ‘complicated’ port files out there, many way more complicated that tenfourfox (which actually is quite tame I would say ;))

That said, strip7 looks a little odd to me. The port file is very very similar to the cctools port file it was based on. Obvious questions are

- What exactly is the inconsistency you refer to ? If its a bug in the main strip then has it been submitted upstream ? If it hasn’t why not ?

- Could the patch applied to strip7 not just be applied to the main cctools build (for the platforms that need it) or is there some reason the original strip is also needed ? Is strip7 not a drop in replacement for strip ?

- If there really is a need for a separate strip7 port, I think you could massively reduce duplication in the portilfes by instead making it a sub-port of cctools.

cheers Chris
 
> On 11 Oct 2018, at 5:48 pm, Ken Cunningham <ken.cunningham.webuse at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Older MacOS versions lack browsers that support TLSv1.2, and other enhancements that allow them to work comfortably in the current world. Cameron Kaiser has been dutifully maintaining a fork of Firefox for a decade that works nicely on PPC Macs 10.4 and 10.5, and keeps it remarkably up to date with security fixes <https://github.com/classilla/tenfourfox/>. 
> 
> Riccardo Mottola and I have helped Cameron make this work on Intel again, 10.4 and up. It works fairly well for many uses, and allows several older Intel systems to have a current browser. 
> 
> It requires some shenanigans to build (Firefox was an interesting Portfile to write), but it's pretty smooth now. Also Cameron has fixed up an inconsistency in the cctools strip command that makes it work better with the huge binaries gcc48 produces on these older systems, and calls it "strip7". I made this into a building port using our cctools Port and adding Cameron's patch.
> 
> I have a (presently) Intel-only version of the tenfourfox Portfile and the strip7 Portfile here in this repo:
> 
> <https://github.com/kencu/tenfourfox-macports>
> 
> 
> Cameron plans to announce this soon, and let interest people hack on it using the MacPorts supporting structure (which is amazingly friendly to older systems).
> 
> The question:
> 
> People can add this repo manually as an additional repo, much like modelica does, and I put instructions in the ReadMe about how to do that. But it would be easier if it was included in the main MacPorts repo.
> 
> Does it appear acceptable to the general populace out there as a Port, or is it too "niche" ?-- or  is there a way it could be acceptable for general inclusion?
> 
> (I'll get to adding the PPC version soon enough -- but for now Cameron builds those so it hasn't been a priority.)
> 
> Best,
> 
> Ken

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