[isabelle-dev] PLATFORMS: Mac OS X

[Makarius]

On 07/04/17 10:04, Salomon Sickert wrote:
> 
>>> In this case I recommend to bump the baseline for Ubuntu up to 14.04 LTS
>>> (or even 16.04 LTS).
>>
>> How did you get to that conclusion? Ubuntu LTS support lasts 5 years.
>> Empiricially, I've seen the last 3 LTS versions being installed by
>> Isabelle users. Consequently, we have only recently dropped 10.04 LTS
>> and are now at 12.04 LTS for some years to come.
> 
> The current date is 7.4.2017. Thus this is the last month of support for 12.04 LTS. 

Last month of *official* support. This means users will have it around
2-3 more years.

There is no problem to support old Linux versions. I don't see why they
should be cut-off prematurely.


>> Dropping Mavericks now would mean to reinstall macbroy2, which is our
>> main witness for non-trivial Apple hardware. Such a change comes with
>> the risk that the system stops working afterwards: the old saying "never
>> change a running system" has some truth in it.
> 
> I don’t get why supporting fewer systems is more work.

I did not say that. The explanation was about the risk of re-installing
a running Apple system.


	Makarius