[Python-Dev] Support for the Haiku OS

[Guido van Rossum]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 9:23 AM, Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven
<asmodai at in-nomine.org> wrote:
> -On [20090115 16:53], Guido van Rossum (guido at python.org) wrote:
>>Did you look at the patch they submitted? http://bugs.python.org/issue4933
>
> I did now (python-2.5.4-haiku-2.diff). I am not sure what you are implying
> though, Guido. It doesn't look like a huge change and most of it is close to
> 'one time only'.

That's the naive idea. That's what I used to thing too, but it just
isn't so. We have quite a bit of experience with these kinds of "one
time only" platform-specific changes, and they are never once-only --
they invariably get out of date with each new version released, since
nobody except the users of that platform ever tests new versions on
that platform. (Also the platform typically evolves faster than
Python.) The effort to get a new version QA'ed on such a minority
platform *before* it is released never gets made, so the expected and
promised compatibility is disappointing for all -- and then the core
developers get blamed.

It can work only if there are core developers who care enough about
such a minority platform to try new versions (both of the trunk and of
maintenance branches!) on their platform, *and* submit necessary fixes
right away. I don't see such a commitment in this case, but if a
believable one comes up I'm sure Martin would happily revert his
position.

Note that a buildbot would have to be part of the deal. However a
buildbot is not enough -- if nobody fixes the build for that platform
it will just be ignored by release managers. And only the users of the
platform can fix the issues.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)