Support for unreleased beta apple operating systems (was Support for ancient machines and operating systems)

[Joshua Root]

On 9/1/2024 05:26, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> On 1/8/24 12:50, Sergey Fedorov wrote:
>> 2. Standard 10.6.8 release from Apple does support building and 
>> running ppc binaries via Rosetta.
> 
> Why would one want to spend time and effort on doing that, though?

You wouldn't, if you were running a public release of 10.6. The ppc libs 
were put there to support existing ppc binaries, which will have been 
built targeting 10.5 or older. With MacPorts, native x86_64 or i386 
builds would be far preferable. Unless, of course, you're running on a 
CPU that can't run those archs, which can only be the case if you are 
running an early development version of the OS.

> So far as I can tell, the project's primary goal is to provide support 
> for the millions of people who run MacOS on current hardware and 
> operating systems and want up to date software for their machine. The 
> goal is not (primarily) to assist in running PPC binaries on Rosetta on 
> 20 year old hardware for the couple of people for whom that is 
> interesting. Certainly there's nothing wrong with supporting that to the 
> extent that it does not interfere with the primary goal.

As a reminder, the project policy is (and has been virtually since the 
beginning) to support the versions of macOS that are still getting 
updates from Apple. That is the expectation for maintainers. Maintainers 
can voluntarily support older stuff, but they are under no obligation to 
so so.

- Josh