| 22 Apr 2025 |
 emily | In reply to @qyliss:fairydust.space
I think that misses that Darwin users can work on Linux stuff too, but not necessarily the other way around. well, you can imagine a Darwin user with an ideological opposition to running a GPL kernel or something. | 17:34:52 |
 Alyssa Ross | Because apart from the kernel we're pure on Linux. | 17:34:59 |
| Alyssa Ross | In reply to @emilazy:matrix.org
well, you can imagine a Darwin user with an ideological opposition to running a GPL kernel or something. Sure, but do we want to treat that the same way? | 17:35:17 |
| emily | (also graphics drivers and a host of runtime services. but I more meant that insofar as you can hold back a ruinous core system update on NixOS you can also just not support the new macOS yet. but I don't claim the two situations are wholly analogous) | 17:36:24 |
| emily | In reply to @qyliss:fairydust.space
Sure, but do we want to treat that the same way? I don't know, but I think there are gradations. I don't think tier 1 Darwin is going to happen any time soon, but e.g. consider that full participation in the infra team is incompatible with unwillingness to use Darwin even at the current tier. | 17:37:58 |
| emily | hence use on NixOS infra really being the biggest dividing line in my eyes | 17:38:17 |
| emily | in practice there are already Darwin contributors who can't fix issues on Linux their contributions cause because of lack of knowledge and desire and the result is that those get blocked on a Linux person taking a look. since we have so many Linux contributors I haven't perceived this as being much of a burden | 17:39:53 |
| emily | I do also think that in practice the objection most Linux contributors have to Darwin stuff is that they don't use it and therefore don't care, and they they don't know anything about it, rather than unwillingness to use the community builder or similar. Tier 1 FreeBSD or Genode or whatever would face comparable obstacles | 17:42:06 |
 Tristan Ross | I think in spirit we could consider Darwin "tier 1" but practically, it's tier 2. | 17:45:09 |
| emily | I think it's tier 2 in spirit too. and almost tier 3 for a while | 17:45:27 |
| Tristan Ross | Oh | 17:45:40 |
| emily | I'm just talking about a world where Nix on Darwin explodes in popularity and quality | 17:45:44 |
| emily | also, consider the case where an issue in Rust is blocking for Linux. to interact with the Rust project to fix it will involve their support tiers, which include proprietary platforms | 17:46:05 |
| Alyssa Ross | In reply to @emilazy:matrix.org
also, consider the case where an issue in Rust is blocking for Linux. to interact with the Rust project to fix it will involve their support tiers, which include proprietary platforms Yeah, but we do have other options in that situation. | 17:46:40 |
| emily | so insofar as we need to interact with the wider FOSS world the same considerations reappear | 17:46:51 |
| Alyssa Ross | and I'm not sure I've ever seen that come up in practice | 17:47:37 |
| emily | In reply to @qyliss:fairydust.space
Yeah, but we do have other options in that situation. temporarily at least yeah but maybe not long term. we don't have the resources to fork Rust because they want to do something that breaks us because of macOS | 17:47:40 |
| Alyssa Ross | In reply to @emilazy:matrix.org
temporarily at least yeah but maybe not long term. we don't have the resources to fork Rust because they want to do something that breaks us because of macOS We basically did this for QEMU for Darwin for a period of years :P | 17:48:13 |
| emily | In reply to @qyliss:fairydust.space
and I'm not sure I've ever seen that come up in practice I think all of this would come up a lot less in a situation where we truly had a tier 1 kind of user/contributor split and general support quality | 17:48:22 |
| Alyssa Ross | (Not saying it was a good idea, just that I've never seen or had the experience of having to break Darwin out as part of contributing upstream from Linux.) | 17:49:00 |
| emily | In reply to @qyliss:fairydust.space
We basically did this for QEMU for Darwin for a period of years :P well, yes. I won't defend that. tbf I was thinking of bigger things than a handful of reverts though | 17:49:05 |
| emily | In reply to @qyliss:fairydust.space
(Not saying it was a good idea, just that I've never seen or had the experience of having to break Darwin out as part of contributing upstream from Linux.) I think this is partly a function of upstreams like Rust having more resources for those platforms though | 17:49:50 |
| emily | like if Rust had comparable Darwin investment it wouldn't be tier 1 there either | 17:50:07 |
| emily | also something something microarchitectural patents something something RISC-V guy who is convinced running an x86 QEMU VM is illegal :P | 17:51:18 |
| emily | not entirely a farce: Intel do shake down people over x86 emulation! | 17:51:42 |
| emily | (ok, generally corporate people) | 17:52:02 |
| emily | anyway, I respect people who don't want to test stuff on Darwin and favour being an environment that is welcoming to people with strong views on software freedom - albeit I don't think we will/should ever get to the point of Guix there. I'm just unconvinced there's a practical obstacle to maintaining pluralism on the matter even in a world where Darwin is tier 1. | 17:54:18 |
| Tristan Ross | So we want to consider x86_64-linux-gnu` as the only tier 1 platform? | 17:55:14 |
| Tristan Ross | * So we want to consider x86_64-linux-gnu as the only tier 1 platform? | 17:55:25 |
| emily | that's the only thing I can imagine making sense as a description of the status quo, yeah | 17:56:30 |
