Re: Reinstate support for OS X versions older than 10.9

[Ryan Schmidt <gtk ryandesign com>]

On Sep 22, 2015, at 6:32 PM, John Ralls wrote:

> I’m a bit conflicted about this. Yes, 10.9 is a bit new for a cutoff, but on the other hand upgrades to 
> 10.10 are free and run on any machine that can run 10.7

Per the EveryMac URL I posted, in addition to older PowerPC Macs that cannot be upgraded past 10.4, newer 
PowerPC Macs that cannot be upgraded past 10.5, and 32-bit Intel Macs that cannot be upgraded past 10.6, 
there are some 64-bit Intel Macs that cannot be upgraded past 10.7.

Further to that, there are users who do not wish to upgrade their OS, even if their machine can support it. 
They may have any number of reasons for that. For example, 10.6 is the last OS that can run PowerPC 
applications on Intel systems; a user may have PowerPC software they wish to continue using. Or a user may 
dislike the significant user interface changes Apple made in 10.7 or 10.10.


> There’s always the option of sticking with the last releases of GLib and Gtk+ if you want to build/run on 
> older machines.

Considering the options we have in the MacPorts package management system, the possibilities I see are as 
follows:

- Keep glib2 at version 2.44.1 until all MacPorts users have upgraded to OS X 10.9 or later. This will not 
occur for years if ever. We still have MacPorts users today that use OS X 10.4.

- Upgrade glib2 to version 2.46.0 now, thereby preventing users on OS X 10.8 and earlier from using all the 
software in MacPorts that depends in some way on glib2.

- Add conditional logic to the glib2 port to use 2.46.0 on OS X 10.9 and later and 2.44.1 on OS X 10.8 and 
earlier. This might be viable. Some other MacPorts ports for other gnome software is already doing something 
like this. But it is more complicated for the port maintainer (me) and it might break some use cases. For 
example, it is possible to build *on* 10.9 *for* 10.8; such an attempt might fail with 2.46.0.

- Change glib 2.46.0 so that it can be built without GNotification support on older systems. This is what I'm 
asking for.