Re: [exim] Retiring old build targets

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Autor: Andrew C Aitchison
Data:  
Para: exim-users
Asunto: Re: [exim] Retiring old build targets
On Thu, 27 Jul 2017, Jeremy Harris wrote:

> On 26/07/17 12:38, Lena--- via Exim-users wrote:
>>> Given the resounding silence from volunteers, I'm tempted to retire
>>> in the next release _everything_ apart from the current set of
>>> representatives in the buildfarm.
>>>
>>> That would be: Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, SunOS5.
>>
>> Perhaps keep DragonFly and Darwin, but unmaintained and unchanged,
>> they patch as needed.
>
> I don't think that would be good, as it maintains the illusion
> that those builds are actually tested - which, lacking buildfarm
> or other participation, I have no confidence in.
> --
> Jeremy


[ With a vote for Kfreebsd from Andreas Metzler ]

What does "retiring" mean ?

If it means inserting something early in the build system
that prints a suitable
      exim is completely unsupported on <OS name here>
warning and aborts, I'm happy.


If it means removing currently working build infrastructure
from platforms that others are patching and maintaining,
then I'm not so happy.

Whilst I understand that passing a comprehensive test suite is
a reasonable requirement for supporting a package like exim,
which has substantial security exposure and other system-wide risks,
there is some margin for leaving in code for unsupported platforms
if there is reason to believe that it works and is maintainable.

---

WRT to the *BSDs; how much difference is there between two *BSDs,
say FreeBSD and kfreebsd, compared with the differences between
different Linuxes, which are all "supported" since we don't
distinguish between them ?
I'd offer RHEL6 and RHEL7 as an example of two difference Linuxes,
but RHEL6 is unlikely (ever?) to have openssl v1.0.2, so will be
explicitly unsupported by the next probable exim release.

-- 
Andrew C Aitchison                Cambridge, UK