I'm blocked, help me!

[Brad Roberts]

On 1/8/2019 1:24 PM, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 6:15 AM Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d
> <digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 1/8/19 6:33 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>> On 2019-01-08 07:09, Brad Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>> There are no build hosts in the auto-tester fleet that are running
>>>> unsupported platforms.  If any of them are "too old" then we need to
>>>> formally deprecate one or more platforms.
>>>
>>> This is one of the tests that failed [1]. That info block says it's
>>> running "Darwin Kernel Version 13.4.0". According this [2], that's OS X
>>> Mavericks. According this [3], support for Mavericks was dropped in
>>> 2016. That's two years ago.
>>>
>>>> For what it's worth, the dmd build log for each build has an info
>>>> block at the beginning with details of the os and tool versions in use.
>>>
>>> [1]
>>> https://auto-tester.puremagic.com/show-run.ghtml?projectid=1&runid=3473553&dataid=24663324&isPull=true
>>>
>>>
>>> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)#Release_history
>>>
>>> [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_Mavericks
>>>
>>
>> That's my vm, and I'm happy to update if Brad agrees. There is some
>> value in having older systems for the language to be able to build/use
>> for support. I would tend to say for macos, however, that the likelihood
>> of someone running mavericks is pretty low. Any computer that runs
>> Mavericks will go up to El Capitan, and the upgrades are free. It makes
>> sense to deprecate support for Mavericks, and possibly even Yosemite. El
>> capitan should still be supported for older hardware, and some people
>> may be stuck on it due to GC-using apps that they depend on (I know my
>> wife uses an older version of quickbooks that requires GC, and won't run
>> on sierra).
>>
>> What I CAN do, also, is make a backup of that VM, upgrade it to el
>> capitan, and keep it around in case anyone complains that they have issues.
> 
> This sounds like a good plan. I'd appreciate!
> 

The deprecation of the platform by the provider does not dictate the 
deprecation of it by the D community (by way of any of the various 
compilers).  It does, however, inform it.  The noted supported minimum 
version is still Mavericks based on:  https://dlang.org/dmd-osx.html

Did the D release management team also declare it deprecated?  I might 
well have missed that.  If so, I apologize for being out of sync.

If it should be updated, the set of upgrade options for that tester are:
   Yosemite    (14.5)
   High Sierra (17.7)
   Mojave      (18.2)

Yosemite is probably the right choice since that would be the next 
version in the list, unless it too is being deprecated.  The lowest 
supported version needs to be in the fleet otherwise it's de-facto 
deprecated.  There is already an El Capitan (15.6) host in the fleet, so 
that's a bad choice for your vm.

So, this falls back to the leadership/release team to clarify what the 
minimum supported version of osx is.  I don't make that call, as I've 
said more than a couple times.

As to the other question regarding the compiler used on the various 
versions, we use the default compiler provided.  That's the one that the 
vast majority of developers using those platforms are going to have in 
use so that's what we cater to.

Much like for the os, it's not reasonable to expect the minimum 
supported c++ compiler to be a c++17.  It _might_ be reasonable to 
expect c++11/14, but someone would have to survey what's actually there 
to be sure.  Regardless, conditionalizing the support is a more usable 
longer term solution.  Exactly how to do that within the existing test 
suites, I can't answer that since I haven't touched it in a few years 
and really don't know the state of the art for them.