February 27, 2009
On 2009-02-27 09:38:02 +0100, Walter Bright <newshound1@digitalmars.com> said:

> Anders F Björklund wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>> 
>>> Can you upgrade to 10.5 ?
>> 
>> It's only a few months left to "Snow Leopard",
>> then we can play the same game all over again.
> 
> Yeah, but 10.5 has working posix threads. It's doubtful whether 10.4 is worth the effort.

the worst offender (semaphores) are broken also on 10.5, I had to implement them on the top of mach semaphores in tango.

February 27, 2009
On 2009-02-27 09:43:12 +0100, Walter Bright <newshound1@digitalmars.com> said:

> Anders F Björklund wrote:
>> DMD is now the third D compiler to make it to Mac OS X,
>> after GDC and LDC before it (based on same front-end).
> 
> D2 needed to get there, too.

Yes, I am very happy about this, now I might start playing with D 2.0 (in the spare time).

>> But the wxD samples built successfully* with all three...
> 
> Great!


February 27, 2009
Anders F Björklund wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>> Can you upgrade to 10.5 ?
> 
> It's only a few months left to "Snow Leopard",
> then we can play the same game all over again.

And at that point Apple will drop support for 10.4.
February 27, 2009
Fawzi Mohamed wrote:
> On 2009-02-27 09:38:02 +0100, Walter Bright <newshound1@digitalmars.com> said:
> 
>> Anders F Björklund wrote:
>>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>>
>>>> Can you upgrade to 10.5 ?
>>>
>>> It's only a few months left to "Snow Leopard",
>>> then we can play the same game all over again.
>>
>> Yeah, but 10.5 has working posix threads. It's doubtful whether 10.4 is worth the effort.
> 
> the worst offender (semaphores) are broken also on 10.5, I had to implement them on the top of mach semaphores in tango.

This isn't likely to change any time soon.  There is the old sys/sem.h or whatever (from the XOpen spec), but the interface just stinks.
February 27, 2009
Anders F Björklund Wrote:
> DMD is now the third D compiler to make it to Mac OS X, after GDC and LDC before it (based on same front-end).

Development on GDC appears to have stopped in 2007. LDC certainly has some life in it and looks promising. I will definitely have to check it out.

However, even if LDC becomes stable on all platforms, it's still not the official reference implementation. That would be DMD. I think it's very important for the official DMD compiler to support the 3 major platforms, and I'm very excited (caught the typo that time :) that OS X has been included.
February 27, 2009
On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 11:20 AM, John Stoneham <captnjameskirk@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anders F Björklund Wrote:
>> DMD is now the third D compiler to make it to Mac OS X, after GDC and LDC before it (based on same front-end).
>
> Development on GDC appears to have stopped in 2007. LDC certainly has some life in it and looks promising. I will definitely have to check it out.
>
> However, even if LDC becomes stable on all platforms, it's still not the official reference implementation. That would be DMD. I think it's very important for the official DMD compiler to support the 3 major platforms, and I'm very excited (caught the typo that time :) that OS X has been included.
>

LDC is based on DMD.  They share the same frontend.
February 27, 2009
"Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:go88pa$1guq$1@digitalmars.com...
> Anders F Björklund wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>>> Can you upgrade to 10.5 ?
>>
>> It's only a few months left to "Snow Leopard",
>> then we can play the same game all over again.
>
> Yeah, but 10.5 has working posix threads. It's doubtful whether 10.4 is worth the effort.

Ordinarily, I detest the idea of pulling support for anything as recent as just a few years old. But Apple themselves has a habit of ignoring users of anything except the latest version, so I would think that mac users would be accustomed to the old routine of their OS becoming a deadend the moment a new version comes out. So, in this case, I would think that there may actually be justification in sticking with 10.5+, if you were to so choose.

But, to be fair, I did stop being a mac user a long time ago (10.2, tabby, or ocelot, or kitty-cat, or whatever the hell arbitrary feline name that was), so my opinion on this matter probably doesn't count for much. Feel free to take it or ignore it as you will.


February 27, 2009
Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Ordinarily, I detest the idea of pulling support for anything as recent as just a few years old. But Apple themselves has a habit of ignoring users of anything except the latest version, so I would think that mac users would be accustomed to the old routine of their OS becoming a deadend the moment a new version comes out. So, in this case, I would think that there may actually be justification in sticking with 10.5+, if you were to so choose.

It's really a matter of the number of users who are not upgrading vs the effort involved in supporting them.

With Windows its very easy to support 15 years worth of Windows operating systems, so there's no reason not to. But there seems to be a different tradeoff at work for the Mac.
February 27, 2009
Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:go88pa$1guq$1@digitalmars.com...
>> Anders F Björklund wrote:
>>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>>
>>>> Can you upgrade to 10.5 ?
>>> It's only a few months left to "Snow Leopard",
>>> then we can play the same game all over again.
>> Yeah, but 10.5 has working posix threads. It's doubtful whether 10.4 is worth the effort.
> 
> Ordinarily, I detest the idea of pulling support for anything as recent as just a few years old. But Apple themselves has a habit of ignoring users of anything except the latest version, so I would think that mac users would be accustomed to the old routine of their OS becoming a deadend the moment a new version comes out. So, in this case, I would think that there may actually be justification in sticking with 10.5+, if you were to so choose.

I would not completely agree with you on this. When you install the developer tools on osx 10.5 it installs SDKs for 10.5 and 10.4 as default, but you can also choose to install support for older versions. I'm not sure if it's only for 10.3 or also for 10.2.

Then what about Carbon, Classic (don't know if this is still available) and Rosetta, environments and libraries to support older applications.
February 28, 2009
On 2009-02-27 16:37:13 -0500, Jacob Carlborg <doob@me.com> said:

> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> Ordinarily, I detest the idea of pulling support for anything as recent as just a few years old. But Apple themselves has a habit of ignoring users of anything except the latest version, so I would think that mac users would be accustomed to the old routine of their OS becoming a deadend the moment a new version comes out. So, in this case, I would think that there may actually be justification in sticking with 10.5+, if you were to so choose.
> 
> I would not completely agree with you on this. When you install the developer tools on osx 10.5 it installs SDKs for 10.5 and 10.4 as default, but you can also choose to install support for older versions. I'm not sure if it's only for 10.3 or also for 10.2.

On Mac OS X 10.5, you can compile for 10.3 using Xcode 3, and 10.2 using Xcode 2.5 (Xcode 2.5 for Leopard is a free download). Of course, 10.2 and 10.3 being PowerPC-only, there's no point trying to compile DMD for them.


> Then what about Carbon, Classic (don't know if this is still available) and Rosetta, environments and libraries to support older applications.

Classic is no longer supported on Leopard, and was never supported on Intel Macs.

Apple keeps old application running on newer versions of the operating system -- I can run apps I made for 10.0 on Leopard -- but their developer tools are limited to a few operating systems back.


-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin@michelf.com
http://michelf.com/