Re: Roadblock MacOSX 10.4 for release of LilyPond 2.16

[Tim McNamara]

On Feb 4, 2012, at 5:07 PM, David Kastrup wrote:

> James Worlton <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>> On Feb 3, 2012, at 10:30 AM, James Worlton wrote:
>> 
>>> On my PPC 10.4 machine Lily 2.15.26 was the last one that ran (the
>>> GUI) without problems. I am not near my machine now, and so I can't
>>> test if 2.15.27 will run from the command line. I'll test that
>>> tonight.
>>> 
>> 
>> So, I'm a bit late with the results of this test. But I can say that
>> the most
>> recent dev. version, 2.15.28, DOES compile and provide output if
>> you run Lily from the command line. It appears the problem is solely
>> related to the GUI.
>> 
>> Mac OS X 10.4
>> Dual 2.7 GHz PPC G5
> 
> I have an hour of developer time from Graham left that I earned with a
> job I did for him.  He estimates that the preexisting work and analysis
> should make this suffice for him getting the MacOSX changes required
> into GUB.  For the sake of getting a stable release out soon, I am
> willing to make that issue go away.
> 
> However, it will also go away by declaring MacOSX PPC an unsupported
> platform.  I don't see any rationale why I should ask Graham to do the
> work just out of his heart's goodness.  And if the MacOSX PPC community
> does not consider this task worth the 70€ for which I would let my
> remaining Graham hour go (and it is definitely a steal), there is no
> point in anybody investing the work for a platform nobody is interested
> spending any resources on.  I would also guess that a _willing_ MacOSX
> developer could learn the ropes in a few hours.  Which would be a more
> reliable course in the long run since obviously this problem is not
> necessarily the last ever.
> 
> Just for the record: I already invested my other Graham hour into a
> release-critical task that is not particularly interesting to me.
> 
> And I am sick to death about users pontificating why I (or Graham or
> whoever else) should consider it my holy duty to make them happy at any
> price to myself.  So here is your chance at showing that there is enough
> interest in maintaining PPC compatibility to give it a reasonable shot
> of happening (and be realistic: even a Graham hour is not more than a
> good shot at it: if you are really serious, learn the ropes and invest
> the time it takes to get this right).

I don't use the PPC platform for Lilypond any more but I am willing to kick in 
some cash if that will help make it possible to maintain usability on older 
Macs.  I know absolutely nothing about computer programming, so I can't do the 
work.  It'd be a lot faster for me to pay for someone else's time than to learn 
the skills to do it myself.  

I'll pledge US $25 if that will help.  Any other donors willing to pony up?