build: drop support for OS X 10.6

[adg]

As discussed in #9495, it might be time to end our support for OS X 10.6.

I'm trying to find Apple's policy on supporting older versions of OS X, but it appears they haven't published anything publicly. (Which seems outrageous to me, but whatever.)

The major concern, I believe, is that OS X 10.6 is the newest version of OS X that runs on pre-EFI macs (or something?). I think @robpike actually has one of these old machines.

[josharian]

FWIW, I also have a very old 10.6 machine around that I still use. However, I would be happy to just use 1.4 in perpetuity on that machine.

[minux]

Having thought about this more, I think we probably should
announce the intention to remove support for 10.6 in Go 1.6
now, and make 1.5 the last version to support 10.6.

This will give 10.6 user enough time to migrate and also 1.5
is such a major leap. As 10.6 is supported now, supporting
it in 1.5 probably won't incur a lot of work for us.

[bradfitz]

This isn't like we're dropping some old Linux version that people might still have in production. This is dropping support for an ancient desktop Mac, where Go 1.4 would continue to work.

[minux]

I've sent an email to golang-nuts, let's see.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang-nuts/-ESF2OhZlBk

[landonbjones]

This list of security updates, http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT1222, shows that last one for OS X 10.6 was 12 Sept 2013. It would be nice for Apple to say publicly that they are dropping support, but when there hasn't been a security update for over a year and known issues are out there I would consider support dropped.

[sdouche]

I'm trying to find Apple's policy on supporting older versions of OS X, but it appears they haven't published anything publicly. (Which seems outrageous to me, but whatever.)

From this link:

Is my Mac OS X operating system supported?
Q. Where can I find information about operating systems supported by Apple?

A. Generally Apple does not officially acknowledge the end of support for Mac OS X
operating systems. Historically, Apple’s support has been limited to 2-3 recent
operating system releases. When Apple releases security updates for Mac OS,
operating systems with vulnerabilities that are no patched by Apple should be
considered unsupported and out of compliance with the Mininum Security
Standards for Network Devices (MSSND).

The current list of supported Mac OS X operating systems (as of 2014-10-30):

OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion"
OS X 10.9 "Mavericks"
OS X 10.10 "Yosemite"

I'd say it's pragmatic to drop the N-5 version.

[bradfitz]

Speaking of which, can we drop support for 32-bit OS X builds too? When was the last time Apple sold a 32-bit Mac?

Camlistore had to add a warning for Mac users because enough of them were finding themselves with a 32-bit Go installed on accident and then having problems, e.g. linking against a 64-bit sqlite.

[josharian]

It's really useful to be able to do my 386 testing on my 64 bit OS X machine.

[bradfitz]

That's valid.

But we can at least stop distributing builds from http://golang.org/dl/ if they're useless and misleading for almost everybody.

I'm fine with continuing to run a darwin-386 builder to keep it working for Go developer use cases.

[bradfitz]

According to Twitter, it's been 7-8 years since Apple sold a 32-bit Mac: https://twitter.com/bradfitz/status/553298936832589825

[bradfitz]

... which includes this wonderful table: http://www.everymac.com/mac-answers/snow-leopard-mac-os-x-faq/mac-os-x-snow-leopard-64-bit-macs-64-bit-efi-boot-in-64-bit-mode.html

[griesemer]

+1 for being able to run 32bit binaries on the mac. I just used this this morning.

[minux]

Not distributing 32-bit packages for Mac SGTM.
But please don't drop support for darwin/386.
(we need to consider 386 developers that use OS X)

IMHO, as long as Darwin still supports running 32-bit
programs, we should continue to support it.

[bradfitz]

I only want to remove them from the downloads page.