Hi Michael,
Comments inline in red.
On 1/18/21 2:03 AM, Dr. Michael Stehmann wrote:
Hi,
I think we have to differ between responsibility and merit and support.
To my mind responsibility implies support. Support implies ongoing
coding, testing, and bug fixing efforts involving not only the code but
the build process.
On the webpage we IMO have to clarify we are not responsible for the
OS/2 port and the merits belong to others.
I think that those points are made pretty well at the top of the page.
But clarification is always good.
But in our code we IMO should do what is in our potentials to support
such a port.
An argument can be made that to support implies, at a minimum,
maintenance effort, as described above, on the part of the AOO project.
As I understand it there has been no maintenance effort on the part of
the AOO project for some time. Without any maintenance effort the code
will inevitably become stale, including the build. Unfortunately the
only way to determine this is to build it and test it which brings us
back to some level of maintenance.
So please keep the OS/2 code as far as it is usefull.
Removing the OS2 code from future versions is not the same as making it
unavailable. It will continue to be available in earlier versions. This
can be elucidated on the porting page.
Besides the points I've already made, keeping the OS2 code in the
repository is confusing, especially to those new to the project as I am.
I'm in the process of reverse engineering and documenting the design of
the concurrency and threading in AOO so as to help myself and, in some
small way those who follow, to understand the design of AOO. Believing
OS2 to be currently supported I wasted time going down that rabbit hole.
It was only when I happened to read the porting page that I realized
that my efforts WRT OS2 were not warranted. If it happened to me it's
bound to happen to others. :-\
The question I'm asking is, given the lack of responsibility and/or
support by the AOO project for the OS2 code and the fact that we can
easily inform anyone who is or will be involved in porting to OS2 (or
any other formerly supported platforms) where the no longer supported
code may be found, should we clean up the code base by removing the
unsupported code from future versions?
I wonder if, after the discussion is concluded there should be a(n)
(in)formal policy or guidance for the future.
Good discussion.
Steve
Kind regards
Michael
