Re: [TCLCORE] The Long and Winding Road.. to 8.6.0

[Joe E. <jen...@fl...>]

Jeff Hobbs wrote:
> Reinhard Max wrote:
> > Joe English wrote:
> >> The two oldest machines I have available -- a 2002-vintage Octane
> >> (IRIX 6.5) and a 1997-era AIX box -- both lack getaddrinfo().  Last
> >> I checked, HEAD was still able to build on both of those (with a bit
> >> of coaxing).
> > Hmm - how about a compat/getaddrinfo.c so that we can still support
> > those platforms, but avoid putting back the ifdef'ery and duplicated
> > logic into tclUnixSock.c and friends?
>
> IMO this is a place where we draw the line on Tcl support.  Those are both we
> ll beyond EOL systems by their manufacturers and should have no expectation f
> or IPv6 support.


[ IRIX 6.5 isn't so much EOLed by the manufacturer
  as the manufacturer is EOLed itself, sigh :-( ]

But what the current patch does isn't "no getaddrinfo() => no IPV6",
it's "no getaddrinfo() => no socket support whatsoever".

Reinhard's proposing (and I kinda agree) to completely
replace gethostbyname() / htons() / etc. with calls
to the modern RFC 3493 API.  I think this is a good idea:
kill the #ifdefs.


> I suspect Joe having them is more a curiosity than a busine
> ss need.  Someone actually running those in production just wouldn't update t
> o Tcl 8.6.


Actually no, the Octane box is still in production.
We still have a handful of customers using IRIX,
and we've got a couple on-and-off projects that
require it.

(The AIX box OTOH is mostly for amusement value :-)

I also keep them around because they've got good compilers --
they're useful for detecting portability and other problems that
the GCC/MSVC double monoculture miss.

> We need to spend our time supporting today's systems and to some extent yeste
> rdays, but not yesterdecades.  ;)

Vintage 2002 isn't really all that old for Unix minis.
Those suckers are *reliable*.

That said, I still wouldn't object if mainline Tcl dropped
support for getaddrinfo()less Unices.  I know how to get it
back if I need it.


--Joe English