drop OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in Go 1.8?

[Russ Cox]

In the run up to Go 1.7 we worked around a crypto/x509 crash on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (https://github.com/golang/go/issues/16473). Apple's last update to OS X 10.8 was OS X 10.8.5 in October 2013. (In contrast, Apple's last update to OS X 10.9 was OS X 10.9.5 Security Update 2016-005 in July 2016.) Although I haven't found official documentation that 10.8 is unsupported, lots of tech news sites have interpreted the silence as saying that.

It doesn't seem like a good use of our resources to keep Go working on a version of OS X that Apple is apparently no longer keeping working. Based on this, it seems like we should drop support for OS X 10.8 in the upcoming Go 1.8 release instead of continuing to do work to keep it running.

Does anyone know of any reasons not to drop OS X 10.8 from Go 1.8?

Thanks.
Russ

[Joshua Foster]

Apple doesn't have a posted EOL policy, but they generally support current + 2 previous. 10.8 was 4 previous so it should be safe to be considered EOL.

Joshua

[Brad Fitzpatrick]

Fine with me. I'd have to prep a OS X 10.9 image, but I've been meaning to do that anyway. Currently we have 10.8, 10.10, and 10.11. I also need to set up a 10.12 one.

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[Quentin Smith]

What work do we have to do to keep supporting 10.8? I think we should wait until it is a significant burden. The last buildbot run on 10.8 seems to still be passing.

--Quentin

[Russ Cox]

The burden exists today. Dropping OS X 10.8 would let us resolve #16473 correctly (that's #16508). 

Russ

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 5:10 PM Quentin Smith <que...@golang.org> wrote:

What work do we have to do to keep supporting 10.8? I think we should wait until it is a significant burden. The last buildbot run on 10.8 seems to still be passing.

--Quentin

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 2:25 PM, Brad Fitzpatrick <brad...@golang.org> wrote:

Fine with me. I'd have to prep a OS X 10.9 image, but I've been meaning to do that anyway. Currently we have 10.8, 10.10, and 10.11. I also need to set up a 10.12 one.

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 5:24 PM, Russ Cox <r...@golang.org> wrote:

In the run up to Go 1.7 we worked around a crypto/x509 crash on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (https://github.com/golang/go/issues/16473). Apple's last update to OS X 10.8 was OS X 10.8.5 in October 2013. (In contrast, Apple's last update to OS X 10.9 was OS X 10.9.5 Security Update 2016-005 in July 2016.) Although I haven't found official documentation that 10.8 is unsupported, lots of tech news sites have interpreted the silence as saying that.

It doesn't seem like a good use of our resources to keep Go working on a version of OS X that Apple is apparently no longer keeping working. Based on this, it seems like we should drop support for OS X 10.8 in the upcoming Go 1.8 release instead of continuing to do work to keep it running.

Does anyone know of any reasons not to drop OS X 10.8 from Go 1.8?

Thanks.
Russ

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[Erwin Driessens]

Will dropping support for 10.8 mean that binaries compiled won't run at all on 10.8, or will they run but potentially malformed by OS flaws?

I'd prefer it if programs continue to run on as much OS X versions as possible, if these programs do not use flawed OS functionality. 

[Quentin Smith]

That issue seems to be a nice-to-have code-cleanup issue. The code that's submitted now works (and passes tests).

@Erwin: I think the practical consequence of the issue Russ wants to fix is that Go binaries on 10.8 would crash if they tried to make an SSL connection.

--Quentin

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 6:13 PM, Erwin Driessens <snes...@gmail.com> wrote:

Will dropping support for 10.8 mean that binaries compiled won't run at all on 10.8, or will they run but potentially malformed by OS flaws?

I'd prefer it if programs continue to run on as much OS X versions as possible, if these programs do not use flawed OS functionality. 

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[minux]

On Oct 17, 2016 6:17 PM, "Quentin Smith" <que...@golang.org> wrote:
> That issue seems to be a nice-to-have code-cleanup issue. The code that's submitted now works (and passes tests).

Agree.

I don't think that issue alone should trigger the drop of OS X 10.8 support.

FWIW, Chrome dropped support for 10.8 earlier this year, but I think a programming language is a much more fundamental piece of software than a browser and we should maintain support for EOLed OS releases a little longer (in fact, as long as possible IMHO).

We still support XP, which has been EOLed too.

If anything, we can drop support for developing on 10.8 but definitely not deployment to 10.8. However, the distinction between development and deployment for Go is really tiny.

[Russ Cox]

Erwin and Minux have both expressed a desire to be able to run Go binaries on 10.8 but not said why. Why? Do you have specific uses in mind? Is there evidence that people are still running OS X 10.8 in significant numbers?

Russ

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[Rob Pike]

For a language that prides itself on backwards compatibility this urge to deprecate support for barely retired operating systems is incongruous.

-rob

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[Russ Cox]

I understand the general "let's keep it working" preference. Noted and shared. But OS X 10.8 appears to be no longer supported by Apple and has not been updated in 3 years and is a pain to debug problems on for lack of finding any instances of it. 

Again, does anyone here actually use OS X 10.8 with Go still or know of anyone who does?

Thanks.

Russ

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 8:22 PM Rob Pike <r...@golang.org> wrote:

For a language that prides itself on backwards compatibility this urge to deprecate support for barely retired operating systems is incongruous.

-rob

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 5:16 PM, Russ Cox <r...@golang.org> wrote:

Erwin and Minux have both expressed a desire to be able to run Go binaries on 10.8 but not said why. Why? Do you have specific uses in mind? Is there evidence that people are still running OS X 10.8 in significant numbers?

Russ

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 7:30 PM minux <mi...@golang.org> wrote:

On Oct 17, 2016 6:17 PM, "Quentin Smith" <que...@golang.org> wrote:
> That issue seems to be a nice-to-have code-cleanup issue. The code that's submitted now works (and passes tests).

Agree.

I don't think that issue alone should trigger the drop of OS X 10.8 support.

FWIW, Chrome dropped support for 10.8 earlier this year, but I think a programming language is a much more fundamental piece of software than a browser and we should maintain support for EOLed OS releases a little longer (in fact, as long as possible IMHO).

We still support XP, which has been EOLed too.

If anything, we can drop support for developing on 10.8 but definitely not deployment to 10.8. However, the distinction between development and deployment for Go is really tiny.

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[Erwin]

I'm an artist programmer and at times i manage to sell a 'unique'
application to someone. Very small scale operations, its not too easy,
and having to require my clients to have very recent OS X versions
installed on their machines, it makes things overly cumbersome, if it
technically can simply work on those older versions.. I even keep an
old go compiler around to be able to make applications that still run
on 10.6 (i have some old mac minis i use in installations).

[Erwin]

I have seen 10.4, 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 10.9 10.10 in the wild, at
museums and galleries, and it can be the case that my software has to
run on a given machine... I know i'm just a millionth of a percent of
the potential Go users, but haha thats still me.

[Rob Pike]

You should ask that on -nuts, not -dev. The dev folks are likely to be more up to date.

-rob

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 6:19 PM, Russ Cox <r...@golang.org> wrote:

I understand the general "let's keep it working" preference. Noted and shared. But OS X 10.8 appears to be no longer supported by Apple and has not been updated in 3 years and is a pain to debug problems on for lack of finding any instances of it. 

Again, does anyone here actually use OS X 10.8 with Go still or know of anyone who does?

Thanks.

Russ

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 8:22 PM Rob Pike <r...@golang.org> wrote:

For a language that prides itself on backwards compatibility this urge to deprecate support for barely retired operating systems is incongruous.

-rob

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 5:16 PM, Russ Cox <r...@golang.org> wrote:

Erwin and Minux have both expressed a desire to be able to run Go binaries on 10.8 but not said why. Why? Do you have specific uses in mind? Is there evidence that people are still running OS X 10.8 in significant numbers?

Russ

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 7:30 PM minux <mi...@golang.org> wrote:

On Oct 17, 2016 6:17 PM, "Quentin Smith" <que...@golang.org> wrote:
> That issue seems to be a nice-to-have code-cleanup issue. The code that's submitted now works (and passes tests).

Agree.

I don't think that issue alone should trigger the drop of OS X 10.8 support.

FWIW, Chrome dropped support for 10.8 earlier this year, but I think a programming language is a much more fundamental piece of software than a browser and we should maintain support for EOLed OS releases a little longer (in fact, as long as possible IMHO).

We still support XP, which has been EOLed too.

If anything, we can drop support for developing on 10.8 but definitely not deployment to 10.8. However, the distinction between development and deployment for Go is really tiny.

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[Quentin Smith]

2.3% of Macs are still running 10.8 as of September according to https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0

Another 2.3% or so are running each of 10.7 and 10.6.

--Quentin

[Russ Cox]

Here's another 10.8 bug that we're basically never going to track down.

https://github.com/golang/go/issues/17033

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