Support for ancient machines and operating systems

[Kirill A. Korinsky]

> On 8. Jan 2024, at 16:08, Perry E. Metzger <perry at piermont.com> wrote:
> 
> On 1/8/24 09:53, Kirill A. Korinsky wrote:
>>> On 8. Jan 2024, at 15:50, Perry E. Metzger <perry at piermont.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I'd like to float the idea that we create a fork of the MacPorts repository that is devoted to operating systems and hardware that is more than (say) a decade old, and that we allow the people who are interested in maintaining that software to freely work on it. It doesn't hurt the rest of us after all, and it absolves us of the need to keep the main MacPorts repository complicated by patches to support very old systems.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> How do you see the way to backport changes from upstream MacPorts to legacy MacPorts?
>>> 
>>> at some point automatical merge would be broken on conflicts, and I assume quite fast.
> 
> I don't think there should be overly much in the way of trouble if legacy reasonably disciplined about frequently applying commits from upstream to legacy. If it's done often, then one doesn't risk falling far behind and having a giant mess to clean up. Someone would probably want to write something to semi-automate it based on a CI for legacy systems. Such work would be beyond the scope of the main project of course, but it would also make life easier for the people interested in legacy. It might even be possible to create some override mechanisms to parse in / "#include" a "legacy" portfile in with the upstream maintained portfile to reduce file diffs in legacy.


Keep in mind that some new commits often broke old OS as well.

For example upgrade Rust which can be seen like a disaster for old systems.

--
wbr, Kirill

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