Hi,
Fred Wright wrote:
I'm never a fan of dropping something just because it's "old". You're
not very specific about "workarounds for 10.4" in base, but if any
code specifically related to *any* OS version isn't well-segregated,
then that's a bad design. And aside from base, what you're proposing
boils down to *prohibiting* maintainers from supporting 10.4, which is
rather heavy-handed.
Agree with you.
I've made 10.4-related fixes to a number of ports myself, and they
usually haven't been hard. Most of the issues fall into the "can't be
bothered" category rather than the "this is hard to fix" category.
Although dropping 10.4 isn't a "hard drop" of any hardware besides the
G3, a number of programs run noticeably faster under 10.4 than under
10.5 (and I don't just mean the GUI). I suspect that 10.5 involved a
"POSIX compliance by any means necessary" mandate, without regard to
performance impact. Also, when I "upgraded" my (CPU-upgraded)
Quicksilver from 10.4 to 10.5, it became significantly less stable.
Apple weasels out of this by calling all machines with CPU upgrades
unsupported, but the 7457 upgrade was quite valuable.
In legacy-support, there's only one feature I can think of (and a
fairly new one at that) that doesn't work on 10.4. There are a couple
where the 10.4 version is deficient, though not necessarily in a
show-stopping manner. Everything else works just as well on 10.4 as
it does on 10.5+, and anything using those features via legacy-support
doesn't need to worry about it.
Indeed, 10.4 was quite fast on PPC. On Intel I used it little
I have two similar MacBooks, one with 10.5 and one with 10.6, sometimes
the 10.5 is more sluggish.. there are a lot of more warnings in console.
I really think it is bug ridden. Not in everything, but it feels in
general usage.
There used to be some nontrivial extra code in legacy-support for
10.4, but I got rid of almost all of it just by organizing the code
better.
Wonderful!
I don't actually *use* 10.4 for anything myself, but I do support it
and test it, just for the benefit of people who do. When the
PowerBook that I used to use for PPC testing died, I spent my own
money on a used G4 Mini, as well as upgrading its HDD so that I could
comfortably dual-boot 10.4 and 10.5 for MacPorts testing.
Thank you for your positive attitude. Sometimes I noticed certain 10.4
bugs come up in 10.5 too where I have i386 and amd64 to work with.
How is a VirtualBox i386 system with 10.4 Intel on a newer MacBook?
One positive aspect of supporting anything old is that one doesn't
have to worry about fixes colliding with updates. :-) Usually, once
something is fixed, it stays fixed. Except of course when someone
decides to inflict a new compiler on it when the old one was working
fine.
Compiler was a tough choice indeed. But on 10.5 it smoothed out quite well.
Riccardo
