[Development] HEADS UP: OSX build requirements for 5.7

[Ziller Eike]

> On Feb 10, 2016, at 6:36 PM, Petroules Jake <Jake.Petroules at theqtcompany.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Feb 10, 2016, at 8:11 AM, Tor Arne Vestbø <tor.arne.vestbo at theqtcompany.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On 10/02/16 17:06, Thiago Macieira wrote:
>>> On quarta-feira, 10 de fevereiro de 2016 12:00:00 PST Tor Arne Vestbø wrote:
>>>> Does anyone see any issues with this going forward?
>>> 
>>> We need to be sure Qt compiles with the latest Xcode available on each of the
>>> OS X versions that Qt can be developed on. Since 10.8→10.11 updating is free,
>>> the only extra test is 10.7.  The latest Xcode that can be installed on 10.7
>>> is Xcode 5.1, so it's important we keep building with that.
> 
> Pretty sure the App Store on my 10.7 VM prompts me to upgrade to 10.11 for free as well. I'm on the train without my VM SSD so I can't check right now.
> 

While I think that the whole App Store argument is a valid one for iOS, I think the situation on OS X is very different

- The App Store is by far not the only software distribution mechanism on OS X
- There is a market of applications that even cannot be distributed through the App Store
- It seems that developers even move away from distributing through the App Store on OS X because of various reasons (long review process, no payed updates, etc)

> On Feb 10, 2016, at 7:31 PM, Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira at intel.com> wrote:
> 
> On quinta-feira, 11 de fevereiro de 2016 02:02:27 PST Tim Blechmann wrote:
>> we have seen funny toolchain bugs, with 10.10 sdk and 10.8 deployment
>> target on 10.8, where std::exceptions could not be caught ... compiling
>> against 10.8 sdk solved that issue.
> 
> Regardless of whether that is a valid approach or not, the fact that people 
> are doing that poses a problem for us. If we write code against the latest 
> toolchain, it may not compile against older ones people might be using.
> 
> That can be because we used new features that aren't present in older ones, 
> even if properly runtime checked.
> 
> Another problem is that the compilers in the old toolchains are older, with 
> older libc++ and with bugs that we aren't testing for.
> 
> If we're going to upgrade our Xcode in all our builds, I would advise we also 
> make it mandatory for everyone else too. Check during configure against the 
> minimum SDK version, that being the *current* at the time of release.

We also do not prevent compilation on <provide your favorite weirdo Linux distribution here>, even though that is certainly not CI tested.

Br, Eike

-- 
Eike Ziller, Principle Software Engineer - The Qt Company GmbH
 
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