[Interest] minimum macOS runtime version for Qt 5.9+

Wed Nov 29 17:54:37 CET 2017

Replace "Business" with your choice of:
   Development Group, Individual, Corporation, LLC, Developers in a Room, Grad Students, etc.

At some point, supporting "older**" operating systems becomes a detriment to a project. You spend more time trying to keep the older systems running using outdated compilers and tools than creating new features or fixing other bugs. Again, there are reasons to both SUPPORT and NOT to support those systems and to each developer their reasons are valid. In a utopian world, all the tool vendors/groups would *always* back port their latest and greatest tools to the oldest operating systems. But from my 20+ years of experience, this just does not happen. Tool/Compiler/Library vendors move their tools forward with new features and drop support for "older" operating systems which brings about the question that the OP had.

I think your interpretation of a "business" is different than mine? Not sure what you mean by your #2 statement? 

** Older is completely arbitrary at this point.
--
Michael Jackson | Owner, President
      BlueQuartz Software
[e] mike.jackson at bluequartz.net
[w] www.bluequartz.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Konstantin Tokarev <annulen at yandex.ru>
Date: Wednesday, November 29, 2017 at 11:24 AM
To: Michael Jackson <mike.jackson at bluequartz.net>, "interest at qt-project.org" <interest at qt-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Interest] minimum macOS runtime version for Qt 5.9+

    29.11.2017, 19:09, "Michael Jackson" <mike.jackson at bluequartz.net>:
    > I vote NOT to. -1. Each business has to decide at what point is supporting the older hardware detrimental to their bottom line. For my business, I drew the line at 2 major releases behind Apple which aligns well with Qt. I service higher education and govt labs where people stay with hardware as long as possible for personal or corporate IT reasons. I weighed servicing those few clients with NOT having access to things like newer C++11 & C++14 because I had to support those older compilers and for my business that just didn't make sense. We _want_ to use the newer enhancements to C++ to make our developing lives easier and create more solid and stable code that the newer C++ and tooling brings. I communicate well in advanced our plans so that it isn't a "secret" to anyone. I recognize that _your_ business may have different needs and reasons than mine. There is no "correct" answer in this discussion. I just need a clear road map from Qt about what versions of Qt will support
    >  which operating systems so that I can plan accordingly, and I have not had a problem getting that information.
    >
    > We also had a MacPro4,1 (2009 era, Dual Quad Core) that could not be upgraded to macOS Sierra so we turned it into a nice Windows 10 workstation instead. Total Cost $150 for the Windows 10 Pro license. Linux would have worked also. Those "cheese grader" MacPro machines just keep going. Nothing wrong with them.

    You seem to ignore facts that
    1) many people don't use Qt for business reasons but have completely different motivation
    2) Qt Project itself is not a business project

    But, as Thiago said, there is no need to vote (because Qt Project is not a democracy either)

    >
    > --
    > Michael Jackson | Owner, President
    >       BlueQuartz Software
    > [e] mike.jackson at bluequartz.net
    > [w] www.bluequartz.net
    >
    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: Interest <interest-bounces+mike.jackson=bluequartz.net at qt-project.org> on behalf of Pavel Mogilevskiy <pmogilevskiy at gmail.com>
    > Date: Wednesday, November 29, 2017 at 8:33 AM
    > To: "coroberti ." <coroberti at gmail.com>, Hamish Moffatt <hamish at risingsoftware.com>, "interest at qt-project.org" <interest at qt-project.org>
    > Subject: Re: [Interest] minimum macOS runtime version for Qt 5.9+
    >
    >     +1
    >
    >     Same here. We have users which don't have a chance for some reasons to
    >     upgrade to the latest OS X version, therefore we are using Qt 5.8
    >     (instead of Qt 5.9 LTS which we are using across other OSs) to support
    >     at least OSX 10.9.
    >
    >     So I vote for support older OS X versions as long as possible.
    >
    >     On 11/29/2017 3:08 PM, coroberti . wrote:
    >     > On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 2:22 PM, Hamish Moffatt
    >     > <hamish at risingsoftware.com> wrote:
    >     >> On 29/11/17 14:46, Jake Petroules wrote:
    >     >>> Why do you need to support older versions?
    >     >> Because my customers are using them, right back to 10.7. They are
    >     >> educational institutions with whole labs of machines set up the same way -
    >     >> they probably get one chance a year to upgrade, and for whatever reason they
    >     >> haven't so far. I can't stick to old Qt versions either because of various
    >     >> bugs. 5.6 LTS has issues with accessibility crashes on newer macOS. 5.8 is
    >     >> crashing in file open dialogs on 10.13. Thus I'm stuck.
    >     > Exactly, my case with edu users.
    >     > They are using Mac HW for up to 10 years.
    >     > About 1/3 is not upgradeable anymore: 10.7 and 10.8
    >     >
    >     >> I wish there was a bit more of a time window before you deprecate old
    >     >> versions. 10.7 is no older than Windows 7.
    >     > +1
    >     >
    >     > Kind regards,
    >     > Robert
    >     > _______________________________________________
    >     > Interest mailing list
    >     > Interest at qt-project.org
    >     > http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/interest
    >
    >     _______________________________________________
    >     Interest mailing list
    >     Interest at qt-project.org
    >     http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/interest
    >
    > _______________________________________________
    > Interest mailing list
    > Interest at qt-project.org
    > http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/interest

    -- 
    Regards,
    Konstantin