all: announce end of support for old macOS releases

[bradfitz]

Note, Aug 2022: See #23011 (comment) for the macOS deprecation schedule.

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Apple continues to put out new macOS releases. We can't run builders for all of them forever.

I propose we announce in the Go 1.10 release notes that Go 1.10 will be the last release to officially support macOS 10.8 (Mountain Lion).

macOS 10.8 was last updated Oct 3, 2013, over 4 years ago.

(macOS 10.9 was last updated Mar 21, 2016, 19 months ago, which is somewhat more recent)

Apple doesn't publish official End-of-Life dates for macOS versions, but I read that their security policy is that they issue security updates for the past 3 releases.

Given that they're on 10.13 now, that means 10.13, 10.12, and 10.11 are supported by them.

Our policy of additionally supporting 10.10 and 10.9 in Go 1.11 would be even more.

/cc @rsc @ianlancetaylor

[rsc]

I just came here to suggest the same thing. SGTM.

[gopherbot]

Change https://golang.org/cl/82275 mentions this issue: doc/go1.10: preannounce removal of OS X 10.8 support in Go 1.11

[rsc]

Looks like we could plausibly drop support in Go 1.11 for both Mountain Lion (as previously agreed) and also Mavericks. By the time Go 1.11 comes out in August 2018, Mavericks will have gone two years since its last security update.

version	released	updated	security update
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion	Jul 2012	Oct 2013 (10.8.5)	Aug 2015 (2015-006)
OS X 10.9 Mavericks	Oct 2013	Sep 2014 (10.9.5)	Jul 2016 (2016-004)
OS X 10.10 Yosemite	Oct 2014	Aug 2015 (10.10.5)	Jul 2017 (2017-003)
OS X 10.11 El Capitan	Sep 2015	Jul 2016 (10.11.6)	Dec 2017 (2017-005)
macOS 10.12 Sierra	Sep 2016	Jul 2017 (10.12.6)	Dec 2017 (2017-002)
macOS 10.13 High Sierra	Sep 2017	Dec 2017 (10.13.2)	—

[gopherbot]

Change https://golang.org/cl/83795 mentions this issue: doc/go1.10: preannounce deprecation of OS X 10.9 Mavericks

[rsc]

Filed #23122 for the actual removal work (whatever that is). Looks like we'll be caught up once Go 1.11 is out and then once caught up we should probably plan to deprecate one Mac OS version each year, alternating between preannounce and remove.

Go 1.12 preannounces dropping Yosemite
Go 1.13 drops Yosemite
Go 1.14 preannounces dropping El Capitan
Go 1.15 drops El Capitan
Go 1.16 preannounces dropping Sierra
etc.

[rsc]

Let's make this issue the open-forever tracking bug for this sequence. Moving to Go 1.11; once Go 1.12 milestone is created, can move to Go 1.12.

[rasky]

One bit of information ignored by the above table is which Mac hardware is dropped by each OS versions. Some macOS versions are "tocks" that drop hardware support, others are "ticks" that don't drop hardware support. I think this should be analyzed when taking decisions.

Also this page reports the usage share between different macOS versions:
http://gs.statcounter.com/macos-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide

Mavericks is about 5% of all Macs, while Mountain Lion is non existing.

[rsc]

The statcounter.com page makes no sense to me. I don't believe their numbers at all.

[gopherbot]

Change https://golang.org/cl/151360 mentions this issue: doc: preannounce dropping macOS 10.10 support

[gopherbot]

Change https://golang.org/cl/151361 mentions this issue: doc: fix formatting for Darwin entry

[robaho]

@rsc what is wrong with the statcounter? you just read it down in a line - they all seem to add to 100% (or close enough to it - there are probably lots of versions in use that they drop due to very low usage, and combined maybe less than 5% ?).

[gopherbot]

Change https://go.dev/cl/518235 mentions this issue: internal/dl: update system requirements

[gopherbot]

Change https://go.dev/cl/549655 mentions this issue: doc/go1.22: pre-announce dropping macOS 10.15 support

[dmitshur]

The pre-announcement is added in the CL above, moving to the next.

[probonopd]

Is there a hard technical reason why newer versions of Go can't be built on older versions of Mac OS X?

[programmingkidx]

@probonopd Good question.
Just because Apple no longer supports a version of Mac OS doesn't mean Go can't support it.
I still use Mac OS 10.12 and find it very useful.

[programmingkidx]

@probonopd I did the work and found out that there are technical reasons why newer versions of Go can't be built on older versions of Mac OS X. The reason is missing functions. While working on trying to make Go 1.22.0 build on Mac OS 10.12 I encountered these missing functions:

• ptsname_r()
• SecTrustEvaluateWithError()
• utimensat()

The chtimes() function doesn't work correctly on Mac OS 10.12.

Overall not a very impressive reason to give up compatibility with older versions of Mac OS X. I did finally figure out how to build Go 1.22.0 on Mac OS 10.12. My patch seems to work well. I am working with MacPorts to try to make a port for Go 1.22.0. Here is where I post my directions on building the compiler on Mac OS 10.12: https://trac.macports.org/ticket/69466#no1.

[probonopd]

Thanks for taking the time to investigate this @programmingkidx. On my Macs, 10.6-10.9 is the latest I would like to install, and it would be awesome if Go programs could still run there. How hard is implementing the missing Mac OS X functions in Go?

[programmingkidx]

Actually most of the missing functions have already been implemented in C. See https://github.com/macports/macports-legacy-support/tree/bce12afbf6e10e0216a87ba15c246b446fc810e1.

I am investigating calling C functions from Go's runtime. My theory is I can compile all the new functions into a static library file and somehow embed these functions into a binary. If this works then it could be possible to make binaries and the Go compiler run on Mac OS 10.4 (x86). As for PowerPC that would take a little more work.

[dmitshur]

CL 563856 added a note to Go 1.23 release notes, moving to the next.