Re: Which macOS versions does Git support?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: May 22, 2023, 19:24 UTC
Message-ID: <20230522192437.GB365027@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAGJzqsmJSVJYTtT41wQ5Cgsz=ExMZ8y7qKPDh-7kt8RXY__NbQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, May 20, 2023 at 08:36:58AM +0100, M Hickford wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> > FWIW Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) was last updated in 2009 and also happens to
> > be the last one that can run in PowerPC, so sadly there is a non zero
> > number of users for it (MacPorts uses a minimum of 10.4 for that reason)
> 
> Interesting! https://ports.macports.org/port/git/details/ It looks
> like the most recent build is from 2021
> https://ports.macports.org/port/git/builds/?builder_name__name=10.5_ppc_legacy
> .   https://ports.macports.org/port/git/stats/?days=365&days_ago=0
> shows 10 total PowerPC downloads in the past year between versions
> 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6

One nice thing here is that the credential helpers are pretty independent from the rest of Git. If new versions of the helper drop support for the old API, people on ancient systems can still use the old helper. We'd just have to make a decision about how much to help them:

  1. (least help) Tell them to dig it out of git.git history, build, and
     stuff the resulting binary somewhere.

  2. (most help) Support both, selected by an #ifdef and a Makefile
     knob, and maybe even turn the knob automatically based on "uname
     -r".

  3. (middle ground) Rewrite with the new API, but leave the old helper
     as contrib/osxkeychain-old or something. Still easy-ish to build,
     but carries less maintenance burden.

> I don't have the equipment or expertise to develop on macOS, so I'll
> leave the API migration as a potential future #leftoverbits

I'd probably do (3), but as I also lack equipment or expertise, I'm not planning on working on it myself (and I'd let whoever does decide to do that work have the final say on approach).

> Reading the keychain docs more carefully, the new API only supports a
> fixed set of attribute keys such as 'kSecAttrComment', so discount my
> original "further motivation"

Bummer. Thanks for looking into this, though.

-Peff