> 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.
I’m a bit behind on responding to the entire “Should we remove support for Tiger” topic, due to work and personal commitments. So I’ll add my two cents. Ideally we would have kept this discussion open for at least a few weeks, to allow time for busy individuals to chime in. That’s not meant as a criticism of anyone, but just throwing that out there. Had there been a formal vote on whether we remove support from base, I’d probably lean toward keeping it for now. (Though I can understand the desire to simplify base wherever and whenever possible.) So it’s not an easy decision by any means. It’s also important to separate our support policy toward Tiger - which is to now de-emphasize it - from what base supports. And that seems to have been lost, or perhaps not really discussed as thoroughly as we might like. And perhaps this is the disconnect, as I’m also somewhat surprised it was removed so quickly following the support policy change. Ultimately the fact that MacPorts still supports Leopard and above, is awesome! And hopefully we can continue to do so for a few more years, given the amount of enthusiasm and interest in keeping older hardware working and functional. Personally I’m fine with continuing to support Tiger, so long as it doesn’t become an undue burden on maintainers. And for the most part, it generally hasn’t been too bad. (With some occasional exceptions.) Though Ryan is right, in that a fair number of our support tickets do relate to Tiger and Leopard. So I don’t know what the best approach is, but spirited discussion and engagement is always a good thing. To be continued... -Chris
