On Tuesday 21. January 2014 10.23.22 Sorvig Morten wrote: > On 21 Jan 2014, at 09:32, Simon Hausmann <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Monday 20. January 2014 20.21.14 deDietrich Gabriel wrote: > >> On Jan 20, 2014, at 7:55 PM, Allan Sandfeld Jensen <[email protected]> wrote: > >>> On Monday 20 January 2014, Thiago Macieira wrote: > >>>> On segunda-feira, 20 de janeiro de 2014 17:36:26, Kurt Pattyn wrote: > >>>>> The CI system is still building for OSX 10.6. > >>>>> Given the fact that OSX is at version 10.9 now, shouldn’t the build > >>>>> for > >>>>> 10.6 be removed, and ideally replaced with a build for OSX 10.9? > >>>> > >>>> Only if we decide to stop supporting 10.6 entirely. So the question is: > >>>> do > >>>> we drop it? > >>>> > >>>> Mac devs, what say you? > >>> > >>> Could we drop support for build on 10.6, but still support it as runtime > >>> platform? That seems to be how Apple prefers to support older versions. > >>> The > >>> question is of course if out CI system would be able to handle building > >>> on > >>> 10.7 but running on 10.6 > >> > >> IIRC, this has been the official statement since Qt 5.0. And yet, for > >> some > >> reason, the CI is treating 10.6 as any other platform. > >> > >> If you do the math from the data available here > >> http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10 > >> &q > >> pcustomd=0 (that’s December 2013), 10.6 accounts for slightly less than > >> 20% > >> of all the OS X versions. Let’s suppose those numbers reflect the > >> reality. > >> > >> Is 20% a lot? I don’t know. Is that 20% the same proportion for Qt 5 > >> end-users? Or Qt 5 developers making a life out of it? Absolutely no > >> idea. > >> Do I see that many bugs reported on 10.6? No, not at all. > >> > >> The truth is, market share doesn’t mean anything. Point in case: > >> According > >> to the link above, OS X is less than 8% of the total market share. Should > >> we then drop the Mac port completely? > >> > >> For all I know, that twenty-something percent of Mac users running 10.6 > >> or > >> earlier are all grandma and grandpa who only use Safari, Skype, and maybe > >> some spreadsheet software for tax returns. For all I know, none of them > >> use > >> any Qt 5 based software. And why would they? They haven’t updated their > >> system in years… But maybe I’m wrong, and I’d like to be proven so. > >> > >> So, can someone tell me what that 20% really means for Qt 5 and its > >> developers? This is what it means for me. > >> > >> We are not that many working on the Mac port. I can think about 6-8 > >> people, > >> including me, and AFAIK none of us works 100% on the Mac port (I’d say > >> the > >> average is below 50%, so that’s 3-4 full-time people maximum). And the > >> widgets Mac style code is a mess because we still support 10.6. And we > >> can’t still use ARC because of 10.6 and some old Xcode version. And have > >> you seen the CoreWLAN bear management plugin and how we support 10.6? > >> Fullscreen mode hacks? Thank 10.6. Building WebKit and C++ 11, anyone? > >> > >> Don’t give me “But 20% market share” or “The XP of Apple” when the debate > >> about ending support for 10.6 comes. Give me facts. Give me numbers that > >> concern Qt 5. Give me reasons why we should keep parts of Qt in such > >> unsatisfactory state. > >> > >> I only work on my little things, and 10.6 is a burden for me. So, you who > >> work out there, that see people using Qt 5 apps, tell me, is it worth it? > > > > I wholeheartedly agree with Gabriel. > > > > We all are contributing to the Qt project - as opposed to private forks of > > Qt - because we want to grow the overall success of Qt, we want it to > > become even more popular among software developers. However we do have > > limited resources, so when we decide to spend time on something, it is > > very important to ask ourselves: How does for example working on 10.6 > > contribute to the popularity of Qt compared to making it kick-ass on more > > recent versions of Mac OS X? > > > > In my opinion the answer is crystal clear: We should provide first class > > integration with the latest Mac OS X technologies / frameworks, we should > > make life easier for application developers. I doubt that we can grow Qt > > faster by looking to the past - the future of Qt is more tightly > > connected to staying relevant and up-to-date with what's going on in the > > rest of the software industry. > > > > > > I personally like the suggestion brought up elsewhere of keeping things as > > they are for Qt 5.3 and dropping 10.6 from the CI system and supported > > platforms for 5.3 - while simultaneously reviewing and approving patches > > by > > other members of the community that continue to have an interest in 10.6 > > support. > > I agree with many of these arguments, and I was in favor of setting the > minimum supported version to 10.7 back when we started Qt 5 development. > But we did make the decision to support 10.6. The implementation effort has > been made and that decision should be respected. > > Obviously it’s not going to stand forever, especially when seeing the strong > opinions from the Qt on Mac developers. We are moving in the direction of > not supporting 10.6. The 5.3 binary packages will not support it. QtWebkit > lives its own life - if upstream does not support 10.6 then there is little > we can do. > > When we drop support for 10.6 we are going to remove the 10.6 code and start > using ARC. I don’t think there’s much room for "community support" for 10.6 > - if we have to keep the manual reference counting code paths we might as > well fully support it.
Excellent points, that makes the choice a binary one indeed. In your opinion - as the lead Qt on Mac guy - what should be the last released version of Qt to support deployment to 10.6? Simon _______________________________________________ Development mailing list [email protected] http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development
