I've got two large branches up in the air (threads and whiteknight/io_cleanup1) which I cannot merge because of failures on various platforms, but I cannot continue development on because I do not have access to those platforms. And I refuse to start working on a new branch until I start getting some of these other issues taken care of. We're in something of a bind. Without core developer resources to work on those platforms, there's not really anything we can do about a failing test report. darwin/ppc, various solaris setups and various BSD varieties are on this list. I've tried to set up BSD virtual machines locally with no success. I've tried to set up some of the recent post-Oracle OpenSolaris distros also, with no success. Whether it's a problem with my particular setup or a larger problem with these distros is not really a distinction worth making from my point of view.
I've also tried looking for an old PPC mac to purchase for myself, but I've been unable to find one in workable condition for a price I can pay. Getting test reports from these platforms is fine and good, but it's useless information if we don't have developers on those platforms who can take action on failures. Right now, our ability to take action on these kinds of failures is very very very small. We don't have developers working on these platforms, and it's increasingly seeming untenable for us to pretend we support them. At some point, we have to admit that this emporer has no clothes. 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. 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. Thanks, --Andrew Whitworth _______________________________________________ http://lists.parrot.org/mailman/listinfo/parrot-dev
