dmd platform support - poll

[Michel Fortin]

On 2008-12-27 09:02:57 -0500, "Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> said:

> Ordinarily, I would agree with the need for PowerPC Mac support. But when
> one spends time in the Apple world, they really need to accept the fact that
> their systems will become abandoned at break-neck speed. That's just the way
> the Apple world works these days, and that will continue to be standard
> procedure for at least as long as Jobs in in charge.

Apple doesn't care much about backward compatibility for most of its 
own apps, but still provide means for developers to work with older 
versions of the Mac OS. Using Xcode 2.0, you can develop applications 
targeted at Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther, a PowerPC-only OS), even on an 
Intel Mac. And using Xcode 1.5, which was updated to work properly on 
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, you can support as far as Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar).

I don't expect Apple to remove PowerPC support from its devlopment 
tools until a few more years. After all, Apple relies on these 
development tools to support their own apps that need to work on older 
OSs, like iTunes which still works on Panther.

It's true that most Apple apps and many third-party ones are only 
compatible with the two or three latest major operating system 
versions, but consider this: three major operating system versions 
would take us to Mac OS X 10.8 (10.6, Snow Leopard, being the first 
removing support for PowerPC), which can't really happen before 2012 or 
2013. In the meanwhile, being able to compile apps only for Intel 
processors will be a disadventage for application developers choosing 
to work in D.

That said, I concede that it'd be a little silly to do a big investment 
in a PowerPC D compiler for Mac OS X. But it's sad that I won't be able 
to use an eventual DMD for Mac OS X unless I buy a new computer.

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