Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 11:16 am Post subject: End of the line for Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar
As I mentioned in the current development plans topic, I have been working on the hard task of upgrading Neo/J to use Java 1.4.x.
After spending several weeks working on this task, I have come to the conclusion that the Java 1.4.x upgrade means that I will no longer support Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar in future Neo/J releases.
What this means is that if you are a Jaguar user, Neo/J 1.1 final will be the last release that you can use.
There are two reasons why I need to drop Jaguar support:
1. The number of C++ and Java code changes that I need to make for Java 1.4.x to work are so numerous that constantly checking which version of the JVM is running would probably slow down performance and make the code a maintenance nightmare.
2. Java 1.4.1 on Jaguar has some serious problems with drawing and printing so only Java 1.3.1 could be used on Jaguar. However, when I implement the Java 1.4.x changes, it is very likely that I will inadvertantly break portions of the Java 1.3.1. So, in order to support Jaguar, I would need to effectively test and support 2 different sets of code which is more than I can reasonably deal with.
While I don't like having to drop Jaguar support, my sense is that the number of Jaguar users is now relatively small (I don't think I have seen a crashing bug report from a Jaguar user for several months) and it just doesn't make sense to devote our limited development resources to Jaguar.
Patrick
Last edited by pluby on Tue Jul 19, 2005 12:52 pm; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 11:45 am Post subject: Good to leave Jaguar behind
Patrick, your commitment to past OS is great. But agreed that you need to draw the line somewhere. Panther is almost 2 years old and anyone still running Jaguar is either stuck on an old Beige G3 box or too silly to upgrade to Panther. The fact that 1.1 runs on Jaguar as it is a great achievement. Jaguar has had it's own problems that were fixed in Panther, so anyone still on Jaguar is being a little silly.
Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 1:10 pm Post subject: Re: End of the line for Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar
pluby wrote:
After spending several weeks working on this task, I have come to the conclusion that the Java 1.4.x upgrade means that I will no longer support Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar in future Neo/J releases.
What this means is that if you are a Jaguar user, Neo/J 1.1 final will be the last release that you can use.
Well, I think this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who has been following this discussion. Also, Tiger now offers quite a few benefits over Jaguar, in speed, features and convenience. I suppose anyone still running 10.2 should really consider upgrading.
On the bright side, $130 plus a $25 donation to NeoOffice is still quite a bit less than $399 for MS Office (though $5 more than the student/teacher edition).
But, now that we're on the subject, how is your Java 1.4.x conversion coming? _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
I think most of us regulars started to see the writing on the wall on June 6. The more I thought about the "supplementary code" Carbon->Cocoa conversion, the more I wondered how you were going to support 1.3.1+Carbon on 10.2.x and 1.4.2+Cocoa on 10.3+ at the same time (since we knew from the past that 1.4.1 was so buggy), let alone eventually a multi-OS-version, multi-JVM-version, multi-platform Neo/J (and build system), were 10.2 support to make the transition into the PPC/Intel Neo/J world....
Terry was never able to get 2.0 to build under 10.2, either, so it was likely that would have been the end of the road for 10.2 even without Apple's jump.
By the time a 1.4.2-based version of Neo/J comes out, I imagine we'll be at least 6 months into the Mac OS X 10.4 release and the number of 10.2 users will continue to decline (at WWDC I think Apple put them at ca. 20% and falling)....
Neo/J 1.1 is the only version of OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 (and one of only two versions of OpenOffice.org 1.1.x ) to support *three* Mac OS X releases, which was quite an accomplishment, and I hope our 10.2.x users appreciate that. Neo/J will still support the current and most recent previous (n-1) Mac OS X releases, which seems like a good practice (since many people are on an every-other-Mac-OS-X-release upgrade cycle).
This should also ease things a bit going forward along the Apple migration, too, I'd think.
Two recommendations:
1) You announce this more publicly (on trinity rather than in Neo/J Dev in the trinity fora ) "soon" so that our 10.2 users have time to prepare and consider upgrading their OS/Mac if they want the "latest and greatest" or sticking with 1.1/10.2/their old Macs if it suits them. Unlike the trinity regulars, this will likely be a surprise to them.
2) The next release of Neo/J be called 1.2 (or perhaps 1.5, even though we'd given 1.5 to a NWF release in our earlier roadmap), because it's not good to drop support for an OS version on a minor-point (n.n.x) release--and because the Java migration alone probably warrants a major-point change.
Good luck with the rest of the Java 1.4.2 efforts!
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
One question: would it be possible to do a OOo 1.1.5-based version first, so there is at least one NeoOffice/J which works on Jaguar and supports the new Open Document file format?
Obviously, that could be skewed somewhat toward the type of user that OmniGroup attracts, but at least it provides some real world indication of where Mac OS X is at in terms of usage.
Edit: Maybe I'm just Mr. Average, but I fall into (almost) every single highest % peak within that data... hrrmmm. _________________ PBG4, 1.5GHz, SuperDrive, 1GB RAM, 128MB VRAM, 5400rpm 80GB HD, MacOS X 10.4.5
One question: would it be possible to do a OOo 1.1.5-based version first, so there is at least one NeoOffice/J which works on Jaguar and supports the new Open Document file format?
As a comment: 1.1.5rc only supports reading Open Document files right now. I guess that someone could look into building OOo on Jag, but it may become dependent on Java 1.4.2 as time goes along, but that may be far into the future.
One question: would it be possible to do a OOo 1.1.5-based version first, so there is at least one NeoOffice/J which works on Jaguar and supports the new Open Document file format?
No, this is not an option. I cannot do the Java 1.4 upgrade work on Jaguar so doing an OOo 1.1.5 release with Java 1.3.1 would mean that I would need to stop all work on the Java 1.4 upgrade. Since the Java 1.4 upgrade is a key requirement for moving to OOo 2.0 and, eventually, Mactel, I do not want to push off the Java 1.4 work.
No, this is not an option. I cannot do the Java 1.4 upgrade work on Jaguar so doing an OOo 1.1.5 release with Java 1.3.1 would mean that I would need to stop all work on the Java 1.4 upgrade.
Does this mean that exchanging the 1.1.4 codebase for the 1.1.5 and put out a 'NeoOffice/J 1.1 Gold' would take much effort? I don't think that guest is asking for new features.
I recall you had to do some testing when switching from 1.1.3 to 1.1.4, but I can't tell how much time you spent under the hood. One would hope that the 1.1.x tree is pretty stable by now...
Of course, I am most interested in your Java 1.4 work and wouldn't want to keep you from advancing that . _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Does this mean that exchanging the 1.1.4 codebase for the 1.1.5 and put out a 'NeoOffice/J 1.1 Gold' would take much effort? I don't think that guest is asking for new features.
That would all be fine and wonderful if OOo 1.1.5 was stable and well-tested. However, it is not which means that to do OOo 1.1.5 for Jaguar, I'd have to keep my build machine using Jaguar for a couple more months. This, in turn, delays starting Java 1.4 work by the same amount of time.
If someone feels that continued Jaguar support is critical, someone will emerge to take it on. That person will not be me. I already spend full-time on Neo/J and, IMO, working on continued Jaguar support may be of benefit for a minority of Neo/J users but it would, in the end, screw the majority when there is no Neo/J for OOo 2.0 or Mactel.
Since we have limited resources, painful choices sometimes have to be made and this is one of them.
That would all be fine and wonderful if OOo 1.1.5 was stable and well-tested. However, it is not which means that to do OOo 1.1.5 for Jaguar, I'd have to keep my build machine using Jaguar for a couple more months. This, in turn, delays starting Java 1.4 work by the same amount of time.
I agree. I don't know if Apple supports Jaguar anymore. If they are like most companies, support stopped when Tiger was released if not before. Sadly, there are some systems that will not run Tiger (or Panther either), but they are not 'state of the art' but suffice for what folks need to do. The current version of Neo/J will run on Jaguar, Panther and Tiger.
pluby wrote:
If someone feels that continued Jaguar support is critical, someone will emerge to take it on. That person will not be me. I already spend full-time on Neo/J and, IMO, working on continued Jaguar support may be of benefit for a minority of Neo/J users but it would, in the end, screw the majority when there is no Neo/J for OOo 2.0 or Mactel.
Again, this is a sad situation, but there has to be tradeoffs. If support is needed for Jaguar, someone will step up and take it over using the current codebase (which should be archived and made available) and integrating those changes required to integrate OOo 1.1.5 code when it is made available as a release. Work needs to be continued to bring Neo/J current for the majority of users and future users which means bringing the Java code up to 1.4. This not only so that Neo/J will run on MacIntel, but to also look at the suspended Cocoa development efforts (which is well beyond what I think I can do.)
pluby wrote:
Since we have limited resources, painful choices sometimes have to be made and this is one of them.
Patrick, I for one, agree. At some point, development for Jaguar/1.2.8/Java 1.3 would have to end. Now is a good time to do so. However, the current code should remain available to those who wish to continue efforts to build for that platform until it is either gone (which I suspect will be never) or just for histories sake.
Patrick, I for one, agree. At some point, development for Jaguar/1.2.8/Java 1.3 would have to end. Now is a good time to do so. However, the current code should remain available to those who wish to continue efforts to build for that platform until it is either gone (which I suspect will be never) or just for histories sake.
FYI. This is why we use CVS. No Neo/J code is ever "deleted", all changes since I started this project are in the Neo/J CVS repository which is readable by anyone. Not only that, but I have always used CVS tags to mark the code for each release that I have done. For example, per the build instructions on the website, the Neo/J 1.1 release can be checked out using the "NeoOfficeJ-1_1" tag.
Should anyone end up actively added to the code at that tag, I have even created a CVS branch from the "NeoOfficeJ-1_1" tag. The branch is "NeoOfficeJ-1_1_branch".
Work needs to be continued to bring Neo/J current for the majority of users and future users which means bringing the Java code up to 1.4. This not only so that Neo/J will run on MacIntel
If it means Patrick is able to get one of his Macs on 10.4 now, that is most certainly a good thing--I'm sure all the folks who have reported 10.4-only bugs in Bugzilla will agree--since 10.4 seems to have caused a rash of bugs, and Patrick can't investigate them directly....
I even get the sense that I'm in the minority on 10.3.9 sometimes when I look in Bugzilla, but I think it's really because 10.4 is new and buggier and Patrick has figured out all the 10.3.x bugs and how to work around them during the majority of the 1.1 development cycle
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
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) "soon" so that our 10.2 users have time to prepare and consider upgrading their OS/Mac if they want the "latest and greatest" or sticking with 1.1/10.2/their old Macs if it suits them. Unlike the trinity regulars, this will likely be a surprise to them.
