[Bf-taskforce25] Drop Irix?

[Stefan Gartner]

On Wednesday, 22. July 2009, Campbell Barton wrote:
> Python guys removed Irix support from their code for Python 2.4 -
> released in 2004,

Blender uses Python 2.5 on IRIX. As Chris already said, they only dropped 
support for an really ancient version of IRIX.

>
> We agreed switching to python 3 is planned once all OS's support it
> (By switch I mean removing ifdef's for python 2.x), but by the looks
> of it Irix cant be included in this list.
>
> Irix its self has been EndOfLife since 2006, so the situation with
> library support will only worsen.

It's still supported by the manufacturer (at least unit 2013).

>
> Last I read Irix would crash on reading 64bit blends, so not sure ifs
> even considered supported currently?

This is "only" a problem with 2.4x, last time I checked loading 64bit files 
works with 2.5.

>
> BSD/OSX/Linux/Windows are all fine for Python support.
>
> Practically this means removing scons, makefile config and around 30
> ifdef checks. Keep SGI image format support :-)

As I don't use scons on IRIX, I wouldn't care if the scons files get removed.

I don't see removing support will help much, as long as there's someone around 
maintaining it and it doesn't get in the way. Besides, supporting exotic 
platforms helps making sure the code stays portable.


greetings,
stefan