The moving target of OS support

[Daniel van Vugt]

I feel that is just making excuses to not aim higher. The whole platform 
changes every six months and yes Linux developers are used to the pain 
that comes with that. But would it hurt us to try and make Mir one of 
the more stable parts of that platform?


On 12/08/15 08:17, Christopher James Halse Rogers wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 2:08 AM, Kevin Gunn <kevin.gunn at canonical.com>
> wrote:
>> I tend to agree, although i am curious to hear what others think.
>> My hope would be that we'd be balanced about adopting "new language
>> variants and dependencies" - if we have reasons to do so, then do
>> those outweigh stagnating for the sake of being able to build on older
>> ubuntu stables?
>
> I don't think “has to build on latest LTS packages” is a reasonable
> requirement. GNOME doesn't support that; the X server doesn't support
> that; Mesa doesn't support that.
>
> Developers are used to needing updating dependencies. So much so that
> there are very good tools for managing this, such as jhbuild.
>
> Now, requiring a new *compiler* is a more disruptive requirement. Even
> here the foundations team maintains a PPA with new toolchains. I also
> don't see us requiring new compiler features in the immediate future;
> C++17 support isn't going to be reasonable for some time :).
>
> We should be mindful of the cost of adding or updating a dependency, but
> not hesitate to do it if doing so makes our jobs easier.
>