librsvg, and what MacPorts is for

[Perry E. Metzger]

See the following thread: 
https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/20744 — but to 
summarize, Mascguy does not want to update librsvg to a safe / modern 
one because ancient versions of MacOS can't support Rust.

So I don't want to be a pain in the neck, but I have little interest in 
MacPorts if the point is to preserve compatibility with MacOS 10.5 at 
the expense of having the thousands of users of current Macs and current 
MacOS have a dangerously insecure version of a basic SVG graphics 
library that other things depend on.

(The upstream librsvg maintainers have washed their hands of the old C 
version and don't support it any more, and for good reason. The Rust 
version of the library provides a far more secure codebase.)

I don't know how other people feel here, but I don't work on MacPorts 
because I like retrocomputing, but rather because I want to use Unix 
tools on my modern Macs.

If we're all on the same page that the priority is current MacOS users, 
then we need to make sure that policy is well understood by all and we 
need to update ports that are being held back for the benefit of people 
using an OS from 2007.

If the consensus is that we prioritize ancient versions of MacOS with 
three users (or sometimes none) over the experience the bulk of the 
users have, that's fine, and I'll accept it, but then I'm switching to 
Brew, and I will advise others to do the same, and will explain that 
current versions of MacPorts cannot be trusted to have safe software 
because the people involved prioritize support for ancient versions of 
the operating system.

I will accept whatever the consensus is.

Perry