Re: MacOS X development and support

[David Kastrup]

Colin Hall <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I'm interested to improve the pace and quality of development of
> Lilypond for MacOS X. I'd like to know if the developers are
> supportive of this, and get your advice on how to best direct my
> efforts.
>
> First, a few statements to solicit information. I'm keen, but
> ignorant. I don't know which devs work on MacOS X development, for
> instance. This isn't a witch hunt. Simple "Agree" "Disagree" would be
> helpful:
>
> Development of code specific to the MacOS X platforms, especially
> Lilypad, is slow.

Looks like it.

> We don't have devs or bug squadders with access to Mac hardware to
> verify new releases.

You have a better overview than I have.

> We need more developers working on MacOS X.

Yes and no.  Most of the problems we had were "GUB" problems.  The
MacOSX problems mostly were a total lack of timely feedback and
system-specific knowledge to deal with GUB problems.  But it is not like
the principal situation would be better for other platforms.  We need
timely tests and feedback of MacOSX (I mean, get real: would we even
notice if the FreeBSD build did not work?).

Oh, by the way, Google's first hit for "LilyPond download" is
<URL:http://lilypond.org/web/install/> which states "When we have
whetted your appetite for LilyPond, then this is the right page."
Unfortunately, it is the wrong page since it advocates LilyPond 2.12.
Any hope we can at some point of time take those offline?

Back to topic:

> We don't need MacOS X developers. We just need someone to maintain the
> MacOS X aspects of GUB and direct those devs who can help with
> patches.

Uh, yes.

-- 
David Kastrup