building on Unix?

[dchmelik]

Pale Moon is my favourite web browser since maybe 10+ years ago, but doesn't run on my favourite operating systems (OSs:) Free/Libre/Opensource Software (F/LS, OSS, FOSS, FLOSS) Unix (*BSD, Open Solaris-based, etc., not GNU/Linux.) Since Pale Moon compiles on MacOs, shouldn't Pale Moon be trivial to compile on FreeBSD? That's what I prefer for desktop, but in the future I could probably test building/debugging on other *BSD and Open Solaris-based OSs...

[Moonchild]

You are on your own building on UNIX. We don't support it and in fact have removed support for e.g. HP-UX and AIX because we can't reasonably support those platforms.

If you are talking about BSD and Solaris/Illumos, those aren't any more UNIX than GNU/Linux is. While modern Solaris has gotten attention from Athenian (despite the sudden 180 of some people involved in the OS distributions) we simply don't want to touch BSD at this point. It will have to be an entirely external effort to make it build and we will not put any time or effort into checking and improving buildability or stability on BSD of any kind. Patches are welcome so long as they do not in any way influence existing build targets, and even if the patches are accepted we will still fully disclaim any responsibility for BSD targets, and will be "as-is", untested, and without any guarantees of anything.

[dchmelik]

[... ] BSD and Solaris/Illumos [...] aren't any more UNIX than GNU/Linux is.

Alright...

When I started studying programming, the term was still *BSD Unix in their documentation (Ship of Theseus logic problem applies to *BSD & Open Solaris/Indiana/IllumOS, never did to GNU/Linux) so that's what I call it.

Maybe the process is much different on FreeBSD Unix than MacOS then (I thought MacOS was simply a FreeBSD derivative.) I'm aware some people used to build Pale Moon on FreeBSD, but not only did official Pale Moon developers dislike how they did it (understandably) but FreeBSD port developers discontinued an unofficial fork (and deleted all traces) for ‘security reasons.’ I wish both such sides (for a while an unapproved fork also lagged behind when a Slackware GNU/Linux team member, alienBOB, had difficultly interacting with a Pale Moon developer, but others make Pale Moon SlackBuilds now) would try a bit harder to communicate with the other, as now people not quite to the same level of experience as building Pale Moon are left to ‘rebuild the wheel’ rather than use previous knowledge.

[athenian200]

Actually, I am working on it for OpenIndiana and Oracle Solaris, which (as far as I know) are the only descendants of System V Unix that are actively maintained for AMD64. So it's as close to real Unix as you can get on a modern PC, IMO.

I really wish people interested in an alternative to Linux would consider Solaris and illumos, because I think they're much nicer alternatives than BSD. They could use more hardware drivers of course, but I think overall the kernel and the system software are superior to what BSD has to offer.

[Moonchild]

FreeBSD port developers discontinued an unofficial fork (and deleted all traces) for ‘security reasons.’

Which all boiled down to something I had already extensively explained here which they did not accept.
It's easy to slap "for security reasons" on an arbitrary decision these days and people will just take that at face value as "valid".

people not quite to the same level of experience as building Pale Moon are left to ‘rebuild the wheel’ rather than use previous knowledge.

I'm aware it puts BSD users at a disadvantage, but this is the consequence of the BSD community treating us the way they do and removing all traces of previous efforts due to a disagreement over branding and basically making us not care about that branch of unix-like targets.
As people in the know may have noticed we have not taken any steps to remove existing BSD support from our tree (yet) and keep the option open (for now) to continue targeting it. But we won't, as said, do anything to help and won't consider it a supported platform beyond being willing to accept (non-destructive) patches for it.

Also, Darwin is significantly different than BSD, even if derived from it in part.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

The full OS X product is different from Darwin for that matter.. Our support is for OS X not un-appled Darwin so while it may use some of our innate *nix support it is totally within the context of Apple Macintosh OS X not so much Darwin.

Also, Darwin is vaguely derived from NetBSD. In any event, actions sometimes have consequences. If you are not prepared to deal with the aftermath of your own personal choices then you should make different ones.

[dchmelik]

Which all boiled down to something I had already extensively explained here which they did not accept.
It's easy to slap "for security reasons" on an arbitrary decision these days and people will just take that at face value as "valid".

I took a look and apparently they overdid it; it's not like most people run a web browser on a server, even if they run a desktop OS because they program for servers. Seems FreeBSD does similar things (making it harder to compile many other programs) but I'm not going to run an OS that doesn't boot to (ba|(t)c|k|)sh with a stable kernel (so am taking athenian200's suggestion seriously, as I tried OpenSolaris in '00s but it was kind of β) so am stuck with FreeBSD for now even if they said desktop users are secondary to server ones...

As people in the know may have noticed we have not taken any steps to remove existing BSD support from our tree (yet) and keep the option open (for now) to continue targeting it. But we won't, as said, do anything to help and won't consider it a supported platform beyond being willing to accept (non-destructive) patches for it.

Thanks.

[RJARRRPCGP]

It's easy to slap "for security reasons" on an arbitrary decision these days and people will just take that at face value as "valid".

Off-topic:
True, for the computer-illiterate! I won't become prey, regarding that! Looks like more and more people, are just preying on computer-illiterate people again.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

There may be hope for some of you people yet.

[shevy]

I myself am a Linux user since ~20 years or so; every time I tried the BSDs, Linux was simply better.
I know the BSD folks hate accepting this but it was my impression.

But to the topic: if FreeBSD devs cause an issue, perhaps OpenBSD devs are more interested and
easier to work with? I have had very positive experiences with some OpenBSD folks in the past
and these days OpenBSD is the only BSD derivative I'd be interested in, due to the focus on security,
and governments in general increasing anti-security for power-plays.

[Moonchild]

First, not sure why you are necro-posting to this thread.

OpenBSD was the team that blew things out of proportion over us protecting our brand and build sanity, with FreeBSD being a lot more mellow (but eventually folding and removing Pale Moon from their distros anyway), so no, i don't see that happening.