Hi, If it isn't too much trouble, I at least would really appreciate this. One reason I think this is important is because Homebrew has a cask for Racket, which uses the .dmg distribution. It sets up $PATH (and probably other things I don't know about as well), and can update Racket for you, which is quite pleasant.
If the maintainers of the cask see there is an easy way to support older Macs they might (fingers crossed) consider it. In any case like I said I would appreciate the .tgz in itself as well! Thanks, Louis On Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 1:09:29 AM UTC+1, johnbclements wrote: > > > > > On Dec 3, 2019, at 2:29 PM, James Platt <j...@biomantica.com > <javascript:>> wrote: > > > > > > On Nov 27, 2019, at 12:42 PM, Darth Vadør wrote: > > > >> I am having the same problem, and I am pretty sure that this is because > the new DMG uses the novel APFS format, which is not readable by our old > HFS computers. > >> As far as I know, HFS DMGs can be opened on new APFS Macs; would it be > possible / a good idea to keep distributing Racket on an HFS DMG for our > dinosaur machines? > > > > APFS has a number of new and improved features but I don't think any of > them are really important for a software distribution archive. Note that > macOS does have zip built in. As I understand it, the reason for dmg as > the official distribution format is just that it is supposed to have > superior integrity checking compared to zip. > > It sounds to me like an easy solution to your problems would be a > .tgz-bundled set, as e.g. we offer for Minimal Racket on the page > > https://download.racket-lang.org/releases/7.5/ > > specifically at the link > > > https://download.racket-lang.org/releases/7.5/installers/racket-minimal-7.5-x86_64-macosx.tgz > > > It looks to me like it would be fairly easy to generate this bundle for > full racket, unless I’m missing something obvious. It would presumably > appear on the “More Variants and Checksums” page along with the other > tarballs. Is this something you’d like to see happen for the 7.6 release? > > As far as the choice of .dmg for the standard distribution, it has two > advantages that I’m aware of: > 1) It allows us to create a easy installation path by specifying the way > the disk window should look when we open it, as opposed to having an > installer, and > 2) It’s natively supported by Apple’s notarization workflow; I know that > .tgz files don’t work, and I suspect that .zip files wouldn’t work either, > though that’s just a guess. > > John > > > > > > >> > >> Long live 10-year-old Macs > > > > Indeed. The 2009 Mac Pro which I am using right now is among most > likely machines to be in use by the people who my company is developing > software for in Racket. This Mac Pro, running El Capitan (macOS 10.11), is > not just a workable machine. It's still a powerful machine by todays > standards. El Capitan is the highest OS officially supported but it can > run High Sierra (10.13) just fine in VMWare. Having said that, we also > need to support the newest machines so I will probably try setting up a VM > with an even newer OS or buy whatever is the cheapest laptop that can run > Catalina. For the Mac Pro, I am considering installing Linux and running > macOS only in virtual machines. > > > > If you want to test that the issue really is APFS then you might > consider installing a High Sierra (or possibly later) virtual machine. > High Sierra, and up, can read APFS. > > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Racket Users" group. > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to racket...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. > > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/1934E9FC-CE39-4C4E-BF3A-0DC37DBA2509%40biomantica.com. > > > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/bae46022-30b8-49c6-8957-426561d52496%40googlegroups.com.
