Mac OS X 10.3 support (was: Re: Installing python25 on OS X 10.3 failed)

[James Berry]

On Nov 22, 2007, at 7:26 AM, js wrote:

> BTW, Does "Official support" mean anything?
> Just another name of priority?

I said "official" policy, not official support. MacPorts provides no  
official support for anything, though unofficial and informal support  
is available through this email list and the irc channel.  ;) The use  
of the work "support" in my mail below can all be considered to mean  
"is able to work with", rather than "technical support."

James

> On Nov 22, 2007 11:48 PM, James Berry <jberry at macports.org> wrote:
>> "Official" MacPorts policy has been that we support the two most
>> recent versions of Mac OS. Which at the present means Tiger and
>> Leopard. That doesn't mean that we'll go out of our way to break  
>> older
>> versions, but that we don't promise we won't.
>>
>> A particularly good example of why this is probably a good idea is  
>> the
>> current situation where we'd like to add additional support for
>> launchd and startupitems. Launchd wasn't available on Panther, and to
>> add new support for launchd startupitems will likely mean that ports
>> relying on the feature will gradually become inoperable on Panther,
>> where it will be too hard to maintain compatibility using
>> SystemStarter features. To continue supporting a the 3-year-old
>> Panther OS would mean restricting support for the newer versions, or
>> creating an overly-complicated implementation.
>>
>> James
>>
>>
>> On Nov 22, 2007, at 6:16 AM, js wrote:
>>
>>> Sadly, there's no way to figure out how many OS X 10.3 users exist.
>>> This number is probably the most important one to take into account
>>> deciding whether MacPorts should support OS X 10.3 or not.
>>> Assuming Apple supports OSs as long as there're fair amount of  
>>> users,
>>> this might be a good idea to support MacPorts on OSs Apple
>>> officially supports.
>>> (10.3 - 10.5?)
>>>
>>> Letting Apple decidess it might be a better
>>>
>>> On Nov 20, 2007 7:30 AM, Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org>  
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Nov 19, 2007, at 14:02, Weissmann Markus wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> 10.3 is not officially supported anymore*) and I do not even have
>>>>> access to a 10.3 box.
>>>>> I'll happily add any patch for 10.3 that does not conflict with
>>>>> 10.4 or 10.5 but I don't have a way of testing it.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> -Markus
>>>>>
>>>>> *) which doesn't mean anyone will break stuff on purpose
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This is the first I've heard of 10.3 not being supported anymore.
>>>>
>>>> Historically MacPorts has supported the current Mac OS X release  
>>>> and
>>>> the previous one, and granted, 10.5 was just released. But a lot of
>>>> ports aren't working so great on Leopard right now [1]. If a  
>>>> decision
>>>> is made to drop 10.3 support, I would hope that we would wait until
>>>> the 10.5 bug reports stop bucketing in and we can honestly say that
>>>> the MacPorts experience on 10.5 is at least as good as it was on
>>>> 10.4. And we are currently far from that.
>>>>
>>>> Note that the new guide [2] does not seem to indicate what versions
>>>> of Mac OS X are supported. It should so indicate, fairly near the
>>>> top.
>>>>
>>>> [1] http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/query?
>>>> status=new&status=assigned&status=reopened&summary=%
>>>> 7Eleopard&order=priority
>>>>
>>>> [2] http://geeklair.net/new_macports_guide/
>>>>
>>>>
>>
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>>