From: "Yugui (Yuki Sonoda)" <yugui@...>
Date: 2008-08-13T13:10:26+09:00
Subject: Definition of "Support levels", 1.9.1 supported platforms and recruitment for platform maintainers

Hi, all.

Ruby committers had the Ruby developers camp 20080811
(http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/wiki/ruby/DevelopersCamp20080811 ). We
talked about platforms which Ruby will support, and decided 4 "support
levels" yesterday.

== support levels
The support levels are "supported", "best effort", "perhaps" and "not
supported". Note that "Platform has a maintainer" includes "Some of core
developers always develop Ruby on it", for example, Debian GNU/Linux.

Supported:
  Officially, fully supported. Ruby will be never released while Ruby
  has errors on "supported" platforms.

  A platform is "supported" when
   * The platform has at least one maintainer. One or more maintainer(s)
     maintains Ruby on it.
   * We can build Ruby for it.
   * We can expect that "make test-all" almost succeed.
   * We have the nightly build&test environment for it.


Best effort:
  We want Ruby to support the platform but some errors occur constantly
  on it.
  Ruby will be never released while Ruby has serious errors on
  "best effort" platforms.

  A platform is "best effort" when
   * The platform has at least one maintainer.
   * We can build Ruby for it.
   * We can expect that "make test-all" success except some known
     problems.
    OR
     We have no nightly build&test environemnt for it.

Perhaps:
  We think Ruby can work on the platform but it is not officially
  supported. Ruby can be released even if Ruby has errors on it.

  A platform is "perhaps"
   * A similar platform is "supported" or "best effort".

Not supported:
  We don't know whether Ruby works on it or not.


== Support plan of Ruby 1.9.1
Supported:
  * Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 on IA32
Best effort:
  * mswin32, x64-mswin64, mingw32
  * Mac OS X (Intel)
  * FreeBSD (amd64, IA32)
Perhaps:
  * Other Linux distributions
  * Mac OS X (PPC)
  * mingw64
  * cygwin
  * Other POSIX compatible systems.
  * BeOS (Haiku)
Not supported:
  Anything other. But, I think the following platforms can be
  "best effort" or "supported" if someone become a maintainer.
   * OpenVMS
   * WinCE
   * OS/2
   * bcc32
   * Classic MacOS

== Maintainers are wanted
I want someone to become a maintainer and maintains Ruby 1.9 for one of
the following platforms.

These 7 platforms are now "perhaps", they can be "best effort" if a
maintainer appears.
* cygwin
* Interix
* Itanium platforms (Windows, GNU/Linux, ...)
* PPC platforms
* x64 GNU/Linux
* *BSD
* BeOS (Haiku)

These 5 platforms are now "not supported", they can be "best effort" if
a maintainer appears.
* OpenVMS
* WinCE
* OS/2
* bcc32
* Classic MacOS

The tasks which a maintainer should do are:
 * Subscribe ruby-core@ruby-lang.org list.
   * Also, subscribe ruby-dev@ruby-lang.org if you can read Japanese.
 * Port thread_{win32,pathread}.c to the platform if it has no
   implementation of pthread.
 * Resolve other build errors and platform specific problems.
 * Constantly build and test the trunk version of Ruby on it.
 * Effort to succeed in "make test-all" by 20 Dec.

Please send a mail to ruby-core@ruby-lang.org list and run for a
maintainer if you can.

Regards,

-- 
Yugui <yugui@yugui.jp>
http://yugui.jp