platforms problems

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 08:19:11PM -0400, Andrew Whitworth wrote:
> [...]
> We can declare Darwin/PPC to be a platform we no longer support. That
> is my preferred solution for that platform at this point, considering
> it's age and relatively small (and shrinking) user base. I'm not sure
> what we can do about *BSD or *Solaris. If anybody has suggestions for
> either, I would very much like to hear it.

Sadly, I don't have any suggestions, but I do want to make sure I
understand the implications of this for Rakudo.

In this email I'm not intending to place or indicate any value judgements
on the options available; I just want to make sure I (and others)
understand the situation fully.

If I'm understanding you correctly, merging the threads and io_cleanup
branches into Parrot will negate the ability to run Parrot on
Darwin/PPC, some BSDs, and some Solaris systems.  So, if these branches 
are merged into Parrot's master branch and Parrot drops support for
these platforms, then Rakudo must likewise make a choice:
  1) continue following the mainline Parrot development, dropping
     any support for Rakudo on Darwin/PPC, *BSD, and *Solaris, or
  2) remain pegged to an older version of Parrot (e.g. 4.6.0) until support
     for some or all of those platforms can be restored.

I fully recognize the difficulty of the current situation; and to repeat,
at this stage I'm just exploring the full ramifications of having
to choose and not pushing for any particular choices.

Speaking somewhat more selfishly:  What benefits will Rakudo gain from
the branch merges?

> Until I can get at least one of these two branches sorted out and
> mergable, I'm basically done hacking on Parrot. And that's not a
> situation I want to be in.

I agree that this is bad and we all sincerely want to find a way to 
avoid or resolve this situation.

Pm