[MacPorts] #51799: add a concept of 'distributions' for ports that work on specific older architectures

[MacPorts]

#51799: add a concept of 'distributions' for ports that work on specific older
architectures
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  Reporter:  kenneth.f.cunningham@…  |      Owner:  macports-tickets@…
      Type:  enhancement             |     Status:  new
  Priority:  Normal                  |  Milestone:
 Component:  base                    |    Version:  2.3.4
Resolution:                          |   Keywords:
      Port:                          |
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Comment (by raimue@…):

 There are no guarantees that ports work at all as all users are on the
 live version. Port updates are distributed over selfupdate almost
 immediately after they were committed to the repository. So even on the
 latest version of OS X, ports may break sometimes.

 On what you could do to improve the situation for Snow Leopard, you could
 provide an [https://guide.macports.org/#development.local-repositories
 overlay of the ports tree] that pins ports to the last known good version
 (as an alternative, they could be "pinned" in the Portfile in a `platform`
 block). That should only be done if newer versions cannot be fixed in some
 way through patches. However, as soon as a port no longer works on Snow
 Leopard, dependents may also break as soon as they require new features. I
 am not sure there are enough users interested in contributing to these
 legacy systems at all.

 Do you have any examples where ports could not be fixed for Snow Leopard?
 Often enough it requires someone to debug the issue and provide a patch.
 Personally, I won't work or care for issues for anything older than two
 releases of OS X (at the moment, that would be 10.9 Mavericks), but will
 happily accept any patches for these systems.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/51799#comment:3>
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