Re: [platform-swt-dev] MacOS X port status?

["Mike Wilson/OTT/OTI" <Mike_Wilson@xxxxxxx>]

My understanding of the situation is that, the PMC isn't likely to want to be involved with the day to day operations of the port. They certainly haven't done so w.r.t. any of the other ports. 

The biggest issue I believe is just ensuring that there is enough commitment to see the port through to completion (i.e. both done and high quality). This makes sense from the point of view of the Eclipse project as a whole, but to be blunt, the reason why it's important to *me* is that, I and several of the people who work with me are probably going to have to spend a non-trivial amount of time helping the people who are involved in the Mac port (and potentially working on it ourselves). I really need to believe that this is going to be worth the effort and it seems to me that if we can't even get a group together who will claim to make a commitment to doing it and name somebody to lead the effort, then it's likely not going to be good enough. I could be wrong, but that's the way I see it.

The actual "approval of the PMC" in this instance is likely to equate to "McQ thinks that they will succeed", since it doesn't seem like there would be any business reasons why the PMC wouldn't want it to happen. [*sigh*. standard disclaimers apply: I am not a PMC member.]

McQ.

Maurice Parker <maurice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent by: platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx 11/29/2001 06:59 AM Please respond to platform-swt-dev

To:        <platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>         cc:                 Subject:        Re: [platform-swt-dev] MacOS X port status?

Mike,

On 11/27/01 8:25 AM, "Mike Wilson/OTT/OTI" <Mike_Wilson@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> The biggest benefit of putting your code into eclipse.org is that it will be
> seen regularly by the SWT committers. This is a good way to get feedback
> quickly, which I suspect will be important, at least initially. The only

I agree that being in the loop w/ the regular SWT team is very important.
Also being on eclipse.org would attract more developers for the port.

> problem with this is that, you can't put the code on eclipse.org without
> getting the port ok'ed by the PMC as was indicated a while back. This really
> does take a formal commitment by somebody to be the port lead.

This is what worries me most about hosting the code on eclipse.org.  How
much administrative overhead do we get by having interaction with the PMC?

People who do Open Source programming usually do it because they want to
code something more fun that what they get to do at there day job.  I stress
the word "code".  Programmers don't like PowerPoint presentations, 100's of
emails in their inbox, and most importantly going through the work of
selling someone on a project that they are volunteering to do for free.

What benefits will the PMC actually provide for the Mac port?  Please
correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the same group that approved
multiple Linux ports and a QNX port, yet doesn¹t even have the Mac listed on
it's road map?

I'm just unsure at this point that a formal relationship with the PMC has
more pro's than con's.

BTW, where's that GTK port?  ;-)

> 
> Unrelated question: If I was going to go out and buy myself a Mac at home,
> what would be the cheapest one I could get that would be reasonable to work on
> the port? 

Very good question.  :-)  Every core SWT developer is going to be worth
three new ones (at least until we get up to speed).

As someone else said, almost anything on the market right now would work.
My TiBook is a 500mhz G4 and I don't have any complaints.  But before you go
and buy the cheapest thing around, you might want to play with OS X some.  A
lot of Java programmers are going to OS X and not looking back.  I would
hate to see you wanting to upgrade right after a new purchase.  ;-)

-Maurice

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