RFC: Set minimum required macOS version to 10.10 #13362

1. 
   fanquake commented at 3:11 am on June 1, 2018: member

   After some discussion with @jonasschnelli, I’ve put together a few notes about increasing our minimum supported version of macOS.

   Our current minimum is 10.8. We’re using the 10.11 SDK.

   There’s currently #12971 open to upgrade Qt in depends to 5.9.x (up from 5.7.1). Starting with Qt 5.9.x the minimum supported version of macOS is 10.10.

   Targeting 10.10+ should allow us to remove some macOS specific backwards compatibility code as well:

   • Font substitution in guiutil.cpp.
   • Weak linking in macnotificationhandler.mm. Note this could probably be dropped already, due to 10.8+. @theuni be good to get your thoughts re Clang, cctools, macOS SDK etc.

   Tagged with a 0.17.0 milestone, as if we plan to upgrade Qt in depends, this will need addressing somehow.

2. fanquake added the label Brainstorming on Jun 1, 2018
3. fanquake added the label macOS on Jun 1, 2018
4. fanquake added this to the milestone 0.17.0 on Jun 1, 2018
5. 
   practicalswift commented at 9:51 pm on June 7, 2018: contributor

   Concept ACK

   More generally I don’t think we should support OS versions no longer receiving proper security updates by their vendor.

6. 
   Fuzzbawls commented at 3:23 am on June 9, 2018: contributor

   Concept ACK

   AFAIK, any mac capable of running 10.8 is also capable of running 10.10, and is a free upgrade.

7. 
   theuni commented at 8:57 pm on June 12, 2018: member

   Concept ACK, I think this is the right call.
8. 
   laanwj commented at 2:51 pm on July 5, 2018: member

   Concept ACK
9. 
   fanquake commented at 11:09 pm on July 5, 2018: member

   Given that there’s some agreement here, and Qt 5.9.x seems to be going ahead for 0.17, I’ll get started on these changes.
10. 
    Sjors commented at 10:26 am on July 6, 2018: member

    Concept ACK

    macOS 10.9 Mavericks was released in 2013 and is no longer supported by Apple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_Mavericks

    According to Wikipedia “All Macintosh products capable of running OS X Mountain Lion (v10.8.x) are able to run Yosemite [10.10] as they have the same requirements.”

    So the downside of dropping support for 10.8 and 10.9 seems quite small.

    Even 10.10 is no longer supported. We don’t have to drop 10.10, but perhaps we can declare it deprecated, especially given the use of the 10.11 SDK?

11. 
    jonasschnelli commented at 8:26 pm on July 10, 2018: contributor

    ACK on setting 10.10 as macOS min. requirement.
12. 
    laanwj commented at 1:28 pm on July 20, 2018: member

    Agree. 10.10 (released in 2014) seems like a good basline.
13. MarcoFalke closed this on Jul 25, 2018

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14. MarcoFalke referenced this in commit cf7f9ae34e on Jul 25, 2018
15. MarcoFalke deleted a comment on Jul 25, 2018
16. 
    Sjors commented at 2:56 pm on December 17, 2018: member

    #14953 probably broke unit tests for macOS 10.10, though can be (partially) worked around.
17. UdjinM6 referenced this in commit 39ff085409 on Dec 17, 2020
18. CryptoCentric referenced this in commit 99e83cf056 on Jul 2, 2021
19. MarcoFalke locked this on Sep 8, 2021
20. gades referenced this in commit 3b8ac153bd on Mar 16, 2022

Contributors
fanquake practicalswift Fuzzbawls theuni laanwj Sjors jonasschnelli

Labels
Brainstorming macOS

Milestone
0.17.0