Hi, I need to explain why I am unwilling to update my glib/gtk+ critters for a while yet anyway. Bear with me, please.
In the past I've been a Mac-a-holic. But not anymore. I have been talking to a few people about the mess that Apple is causing everyone WRT the open-source projects. Apple is about to release OSX version 10.7 AKA "Lion". (http://www.apple.com/macosx/) Apple is also forcing us to (eventually/soon) get rid of Pure-GNU GCC type compilers, AFAISI. (1) All symlinks of the 'cc' family are being pointed to the related llvm-gcc critters, which is using GCC as a front-end parser but LLVM (http://llvm.org/) as the guts of the compiler, ostensibly for "compatability". (2) At least one of the "packagers" (http://www.FinkProject.org/) has placed 'clang' (http://clang.llvm.org/) as the default compiler for any 10.7-level system. If a 'port' has no override settings, it will get built with 'clang', which /will/ be free of GNU compilers, IIUC. (3a) Lion runs things strictly in 64-bit mode (even tho some Macs still use 32-bit EFI/kernels). I've been compiling everything in 32-bit mode, not worrying about the "universal binary" facility which would provide 64-bit libraries etc for easy switch-over to Lion. But if I /do/ switch to Lion, then I /must/ re-build /everything/ in 64-bit mode. (3b) As an aside, Lion is also forcing many users to abandon their not-so-old machines, mostly those that still use the PowerPC CPUs, but also those that use the earlier Intel CPUs that cannot run 64-bit mode at all i.e. "Core-Duo" CPUs (OTOH the "Core-2-Duo [C2D]" is fine for Lion, at least for now). (3c) As another aside, Lion will not provide the Rosetta PPC emulator any more, for those apps that have no Intel version. There are people saying they refuse to switch to Lion for this very fact alone, mainly because of the banking & business apps they use. (Rosetta was actually licensed by Apple, from the Transitive Corp. Here is where things got sticky. IBM had essentially bought-out Transitive, so that IBM could support non-PPC systems on their own PPC hardware -- this is the exact opposite of what Rosetta provides. We can view the announcement of this buy-out only thru the "Way-Back Machine": <http://replay.web.archive.org/20090205053333/http://www.transitive.com/news/press_full/153>. This is now known as "PowerVM", and the transitive.com URL will now force you over to IBM's webpages, where Apple is no-longer mentioned anywhere there. So we are quite sure Rosetta is a dead project anymore. If Intel-Mac users still need to run PPC apps, they cannot switch to Lion, if/until a third party invents another way of emulation -- of course there are all sorts of emulation projects (MAME, BOCHS, WINE, etc.) but no-telling when a usable project will ensue for a PPC-on-Intel environment. And BTW I do not want to get into the "bad flavor" left by the earlier Apple-IBM fallout.) (4) I have not seen any worthwhile updates to the Apple-provided GCC family at all, during most of this year. Of course the *ix world has moved on far-past gcc-4.2.1, yet that's the "newest" "official" gcc we've got and will continue to have, ISTM. Yes there /are/ problems with Apple's gcc-4.2.1, glitches in some compiled code that seem to exist over many years, actually. … Essentially, I've been wanting to "jump ship" for a very long time (years). In fact, the people I've conversed with, have all agreed with me. But I thought I would pay the yearly fee to join ADC (Apple Development Center, http://developer.apple.com/) to see what I could do to help. (In case the reader does not know, I am medically disabled / retired, with 38+years work on record. I have "professional" experience in the system-level programming for a big huge shop which uses machines made by a famous three-letter international company. I do this open-source stuff because I believe in it whole-heartedly. Plus, in my "twilight years", it helps keep my mind sharp.) I only have one single machine here, which also is used for making tons of OTA TV recordings. I don't get much down-time to boot-up any other system. I /should/ get another machine. But the thought of "jumping ship" is plaguing my choices: Do I get another Mac, or do I *really* jump-ship and get an AMD-based system, with a *real* open-source system (Linux, *BSD, etc.). If I truly want to jump-ship, I do not want another Intel-based system, and I can see how other chipsets are no-longer viable (e.g. PowerPC, my fav). Either way, even if I stick with my current Mac, I am going to be forced to recompile every single project, so they'll run under Lion, or so they'll run on another machine/system/platform. And most if not all of the OSX "packagers" are not ready for Lion -- it can take a very long time (at least a year I'd say, based on earlier OSX versions experience) to get patches up-stream'd into the projects repos everywhere, to be able to compile "out of the box" (src tarballs) without further specialized patching. (I really do detest these "packagers" esp'ly for Macs.) So, that's where I am at, right now, trying to figure-out what to do. Do I jump ship, and if so, to what? _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
