[Libreoffice] Mac OS X Discussion of Using Xcode and SDK >= 10.6

[Christian Lohmaier]

Hi Peter, *,

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 9:29 PM, Peter Teeson <peter.teeson at bell.net> wrote:
> Hi Christian, *,:
> On 2011-05-09, at 12:56 PM, Christian Lohmaier wrote:
>> Hi Peter, *,
>> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 6:36 PM, Peter Teeson <peter.teeson at bell.net> wrote:
>>> On 2011-05-09, at 6:02 AM, Christian Lohmaier wrote:
>>> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 2:35 AM, Peter Teeson <peter.teeson at bell.net> wrote:
>>> [...]
> Can I assume you are using or have used Xcode?

XCode the IDE: no
XCode the software bundle that provides the compiler and development files: yes.

> If so then you know one can have Project settings and also settings for specificTargets based on different SDK's. And hence different builds.

Oh, different build configurations is of course no problem, that would
just be adding a configure switch --with-macosx-sdkversion -  but
maintaining the actual code for two different variants is. I just
don't see the Mac-part has enough manpower to do so.

> Of course there is the implication that the source code needs the appropriate if defs.
> But the present source must already be riddled with them - to our sorrow.

Well - as there is just one baseline, there are only very, very few
mac related checks (if at all, IIRC the only thing is the filedialogs
or something similar - not even sure if it does contain version
dependent code or just used to do so)

Again the problem I see is:
* Developers use newer version, they don't even notice that they
introduce incompatible code
* There are very few mac developers in total to begin with, those who
then have 10.4 to actually work on a fix is even lower
* Mac-users don't usually engage in doing QA/Testing either, Feedback
from Mac users comes very late (if at all)
→ you'll end up with code that won't work for 10.4, but nobody
able/willing to fix up that code/writing a backwards compatible copy
that does the same for 10.4 using a different API

And so far I didn't hear of any specific feature or similar that would
require 10.5 or 10.6 API/libs...

I'm aware that this will not work forever. Alone because Apple likes
to break compatibility despite shipping the older SDKs - but I'd
rather make it harder (i.e. not making it easier) for people to
introduce stuff that is not supported on 10.4 (i.e. stuff that needs
to be duplicated for 10.4 anyway) as long as the 10.4 code also works
on 10.5 and 10.6.

ciao
Christian