<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">On 1 February 2016 at 00:39, John Willis <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:John.Willis@distant-earth.com" target="_blank">John.Willis@distant-earth.com</a>></span> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
For the last few releases ports have been slow to arrive, often long after the main release (I know I am as guilty as anyone). I wonder if there is merit on having a real push to get ports in for the release or at least get status reports on them before 1.8.0 is branched. A mail directly to maintainers maybe?<br></blockquote><div>I always was e-mailing the porters directly once release is tagged.</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
With a little luck and some willing maintainers maybe we can get unofficial 1.8.0 test builds out on blogs and whatnot for a wide range of ports on or just after the 7th branch use give that period till the 19th to get some user feedback from the various communities around the ports/devices.<br></blockquote><div>I don't really like the idea. We will not be able to provide support for these ports unless we have the porter officially and reachable by the team.</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
It just strikes me that it would be a shame to push into another release if the ports fail to materialise. I guess it's the curse of a stable and well maintained codebase, a lot of the porters have no need to jump in very often but rot and regressions can still creep in and if we slipped a few weeks but got a raft of bug fixes for ports from some focused effort that is not all told a bad thing. Especially as we will be pushing new platform enhanced ports for devices like the RaspberryPi in this release (well I hope so anyway).<br></blockquote><div>For a long time I was telling the porters that the effort is minimal: build your port, check it launches with couple of games and package it.</div><div><br></div><div>With our architecture once you have an engine running, most of others will run as well. Those engines which differ either require some specific port feature like full-color support, or cursor palettes, or are resource-demanding, like big resolution or heavy computational stuff as MT-32 emulator or memory requirements.</div><div><br></div><div>In my opinion, the primary reason for lower porter engagement is that many platforms these days are cannibalized either by Linux/Andoid or by iOS. Also we see two primary architectures, x86 and ARM emerging the market. Thus, people are not really keen of putting much effort into maintaining "exotic" ports.</div><div><br></div><div>What is a bit sad, is that the Android and iOS ports are underlooked. I put high hopes into bSr43's involvement with iOS port, so it could be finally brought up-to-date.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Eugene</div><div><br></div></div></div></div>