Re: Proposal to remove support for MachTen

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004, H.Merijn Brand wrote:

> On Wed 11 Feb 2004 15:54, Dominic Dunlop <[email protected]> wrote:

   [ giving up on MachTen ]

> I propose the following:
>
> 1. Leave Configure as it is, this also to simplify integration
>    to older versions, as Configure is still shared amongst all

Yes, but certainly do put some comments in the appropriate unit
(OldConfig.U, I think, offhand.)

> 2. Make hints/machten.sh exit with a warning for any perl
>    higher than 5.8.x. This exit will have the same effect as
>    you intended with the change to Configure: it won't build

Or maybe don't even bother, though certainly remove or reword
Dominic's promise to help fix any problems!

After all, there's a difference between not supporting something and
going out of our way to un-support it.

Phrased differently, the fact that there even *is* a MachTen mailing list
is evidence that someone has a least a tiny bit of interest in it.  Yes, I
know the product is defunct.  Yes, I know that there are alternatives.
Still, if someone really wanted to try to build perl-5.9.x on it, even
just for fun, we might was well leave the existing infrastructure in place
as long as it doesn't make something else hard.

I note that a number of problems that Dominic solved for MachTen actually
had (or could have) quite generic application, for example PPC alignment
issues and stack-size limits related to regular expression recursion. It'd
be nice to preserve that hard-earned wisdom somehow; the hint file does a
nice job of that.

Sometimes, such old cruft does get in the way and needs to be removed.
In 5.005, for example, we finally required ANSI C because the prototype
stuff was just getting too painful.  However, on the flip side, just
recently the old Mips "dual universe" infrastructure came in handy when
someone wanted to ignore /usr/include and use private include files
instead.

Of course to put things in perspective, I tend to have a soft spot for old
neglected ports.  I never even got around to deleting hints/3b1.sh, even
though the last successful build I am aware of for that platform was on
5.001m.  Nor did I ever delete hints/isc_2.sh, though that was superceded
by version 3 about 10 years ago, and that was superceded by version 4, and
that was bought by Sun and abandoned around 1996 or so :-).

-- 
    Andy Dougherty		[email protected]