Please do not remove Tiger support

[Graham A]

Hello,

I'm not sure if this is the right place to send this email, but as a 
user of Tiger MacPorts, I think it is very unfortunate that you have 
decided to no longer support Tiger, and I hope there may be some room to 
reconsider this decision for those of us who still need it.

Although the last message in the thread "Time to say goodbye to Tiger?" 
suggests "no opposition", within that same thread there were a couple of 
users who seemed quite opposed to the decision to remove Tiger support, 
and I would like to add one more voice.

Additionally, there are other people on MacRumors who are still using 
MacPorts and negatively impacted by the loss of Tiger support, such as - 
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/devilutionx-diablo-1-for-tiger-ppc.2449064/ 


Not to mention a few comments on the patch removing Tiger support on 
GitHub, which may likely accumulate further comments, as it has only 
been about one week since support was removed - 
https://github.com/macports/macports-base/commit/fe87793b8e5bb4a05bc432a3c3b17b3fb870b0c7 


The advantages of Tiger, aside from what's already been said by others 
in the "Time to say goodbye to Tiger?" thread (such as Riccardo Mottola 
and raf), from a user perspective also include that Tiger is the last 
version of OS X to support OS 9 Classic programs.  Except for browsing 
the Internet, I personally have no use for any version of Mac OS after 
10.4 since all of the Mac programs I would ever want to use work on Mac 
OS Tiger with MacPorts filling in the gaps (until now).

And the most up-to-date web browser for Mac OS X PowerPC is made to be 
built in OS X 10.4.11 using MacPorts.  If MacPorts stops working on 10.4 
permanently, then it may also affect the users of the later systems 
(particularly Leopard), by stifling further development of the PowerPC 
Web Browser (the TFF derivatives, with AquaFox being the most recent 
successor).

Mac OS X 10.4 development also has the advantage that if a program works 
on the OS X side of Tiger, it should likely also work on Leopard and 
Snow Leopard since they are both supposed to be mostly binary 
backwards-compatible (+/- Rosetta) and possibly other later OS X systems 
if it was compiled as a universal binary.

So, if those software developers working on OS X Tiger do get a good Web 
Browser working on Tiger newer than Firefox ESR 78, users of Lion, etc. 
may also benefit from our work.  The same goes for if we have something 
useful to contribute to MacPorts which may help something compile 
upstream.  Why prevent them from potentially helping you when it costs 
next to nothing?

It shouldn't take that much more than adding "if darwin > 9" if 
something Tiger-specific doesn't work on newer versions.

Supporting Tiger also keeps many older computers still usable. This 
helps reduce unnecessary e-Waste and also advocates for the general 
notion of keeping both FOSS and the Internet accessible for "everyone", 
including those with older computers, which for some of us was a big 
reason for developing and contributing to various FOSS projects, which 
Mac OS X (including the later versions you are likely writing your reply 
on) have and do benefit.I'm not sure what more I can say, but I'm just 
hoping there is some possibility for you to reconsider your decision and 
bring back support for Tiger.

Regards,
Graham

On 10/02/2025 5:26 p.m., Rainer Müller wrote:
> On 10/02/2025 10.36, Gleb Mazovetskiy wrote:
>> I've subscribed to the mailing list just to post this. This is in
>> response to https://lists.macports.org/pipermail/macports-dev/2025-
>> January/046014.html <https://lists.macports.org/pipermail/macports-
>> dev/2025-January/046014.html>, which I noticed because Tiger support has
>> been ripped out of macports-base in https://github.com/macports/
>> macports-base/commit/fe87793b8e5bb4a05bc432a3c3b17b3fb870b0c7 <https://
>> github.com/macports/macports-base/commit/
>> fe87793b8e5bb4a05bc432a3c3b17b3fb870b0c7>.
>>
>> I think dropping support for Tiger in this way is quite heavy-handed.
>> I'd like to ask for a compromise, where Tiger stuff is maintained on a
>> volunteer best-effort per-issue basis rather than entirely ripped out.
>>
>> I understand that maintaining Tiger causes some overhead. Only a subset
>> of packages build on Tiger and that's OK. Trac issues can be closed as
>> wontfix or ignored until somebody volunteers to fix them. Breaking Tiger
>> accidentally shouldn't block anyone but please do not break it
>> deliberately.
> What you describe is exactly what has been the state of things for the
> last ~10 years. We kept things for older systems in place in base as
> long as they did not break anything. However, it is finally time to
> remove support for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. It has not even seen security
> updates by Apple in over 15 years.
>
> At this point, there is little practical justification to use such an
> unsupported OS other than for purely nostalgic reasons. And if you want
> it for that, you will not even need current software on top of it to
> recreate an authentic experience.
>
> If you do not want to throw out the hardware, use one of the *BSDs or a
> Linux distribution. But even those are slowly removing support for i386,
> while 32-bit PowerPC has already been dead for a few years in the major
> distributions.
>
> Even larger (development) communities have already moved on from these
> platforms. Preserving old machines and software is valuable for
> historical purposes, but maintaining support in a project like MacPorts
> will not be sustainable.
>
>> Moreover, I think porting to Tiger has recently become much easier
>> because of 2 things:
>>
>>   1. gcc14 is now the default for Tiger less than 2 months ago. A modern
>>      compiler makes many previously used hacks unnecessary. https://
>>      github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/26655 <https://github.com/
>>      macports/macports-ports/pull/26655>
>>   2. There has been incredible progress in legacy-support for Tiger,
>>      merged today. This brings Tiger much closer to modern macOS SDK, and
>>      makes . https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/27619
>>      <https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/27619>
>>
>> These two changes make it much easier to support Tiger.
> I am well aware that this support of legacy machines is actually the
> motivation for some to contribute at all. In a volunteer-based open
> source project, people will have different incentives to come together.
> That also means that the effort currently spent on legacy systems cannot
> be redirected to work on other areas of MacPorts.
>
> I would have wished that all this effort went into improving modern open
> source software instead of desperately trying to keep legacy systems on
> life support. By that I really do not care if that time went into
> MacPorts or any other open source software. The time contributed by
> volunteers is a valuable resource for all projects on a global scale. In
> my opinion, putting it into legacy systems is a complete waste.
>
> That said, I do not want to diminish the effort people put into working
> on what interests them. Open source projects thrive on people that
> "scratch their own itch" and everyone contributes where they find
> personal value. Please continue to contribute. After all, regardless of
> your motivation, your effort is what keeps open source communities alive.
>
> Rainer