Why drop support for powerpc macs?

[fogger]

Why drop support for PPC Macs just because Xcode 4 doesn't support it? You can easily have Xcode 3 and 4 installed side by side, and the project files for both are compatible. While it's still real easy to support powerpc macs, I don't see why support should be dropped.

Also, in ticket #4104 - Drop PPC support, it's said that "< 5% of Adium users have PPC Macs" as a reason for dropping support. You can't compare the usage on an IM client with the usage of a BT client. A BT client is more likely to be installed on an older machine that doesn't get used much otherwise. Why not get some real usage stats? Despite less than 5% of Adium users running PPC Macs, they haven't dropped support for PPC. That 5% still represents thousands of users.

Sorry for the rant. I can understand dropping support for older hardware & OS versions when it's a hindrance to adding new features, but that's just not the case yet.

[Altair]

I got a question for the developers related to the "PPC-issue". If the support for PPC is dropped in the OSX version (as I understand), will I still be able to compile the transmission-daemon on a PPC? ATM I'm using a Gentoo prefix on a PPC machine running OSX. So for compiling etc. only tools from within the prefix are used, i.e. the system behaves like a genuine Gentoo OS installed on a PPC machine.

Thanks!

[.Neo]

If you're fine using 5-year old hardware (or even older) with Mac OS X Leopard or below why complain about having to use an older version of Transmission? It's not like version 2.22 will suddenly stop working. At some point developers will start dropping Mac OS X Leopard support and move on to Mac OS X Snow Leopard / Lion. When that happens a Universal binary serves no purpose anymore.

[CyberSkull]

I'm running 10.5.8 on my PowerBook G4 17", a more than 5 year old Mac. As long as you support 10.5, please keep supporting PPC! MacOSXHints has an article on how to keep the old SDKs & GCC in Xcode 4, so you don't need to drop PPC support.

[oldguy]

Having looked for a *clear* statement, and finding none (tickets -- board --- PPC on --- PPC off --- here's a patch --- duplicate issue --- 2.22 and 2.22+ )

Just what is the latest/greatest for us PPC users --- and a clear link would be nice ---
The current link on the home page gets the 4 March version 2.22 (12099)

[John Clay]

Having looked for a *clear* statement, and finding none (tickets -- board --- PPC on --- PPC off --- here's a patch --- duplicate issue --- 2.22 and 2.22+ )

Just what is the latest/greatest for us PPC users --- and a clear link would be nice ---
The current link on the home page gets the 4 March version 2.22 (12099)

The latest release for PPC will be 2.22. The latest version to work on PPC would be an SVN build somewhere after - but those will not be supported.

[Altair]

Having looked for a *clear* statement, and finding none (tickets -- board --- PPC on --- PPC off --- here's a patch --- duplicate issue --- 2.22 and 2.22+ )

Just what is the latest/greatest for us PPC users --- and a clear link would be nice ---
The current link on the home page gets the 4 March version 2.22 (12099)

The latest release for PPC will be 2.22. The latest version to work on PPC would be an SVN build somewhere after - but those will not be supported.

Does that relate to all different versions of Transmission (GTK, OSX, -daemon, -cli) or only the OSX version? Sorry for being that persistant

[livings124]

This only applies to building through Xcode.

[Altair]

This only applies to building through Xcode.

Thanks for the clarification!

[Fox_Mulder]

Why drop support for Mac OS X 10.4, when it should be easy to compile a binary for it on PPC systems that incorporates all the features of the current version for 10.5 or higher? Not everyone can upgrade to 10.5 or afford to buy a new system that runs 10.5 or higher, and there are still millions of people using 10.4 on PPC.

A tracker I use has recently changed all their torrents to require clients that support DHT and UDP; HTTP torrents no longer work, so that's a real problem that can easily be solved with a PPC binary of Transmission for 10.4.

When are we going to see that?

[livings124]

Sorry, 10.4 hasn't been supported in a long time and won't be again.

[minimum91]

This is indeed truly illogical. You can't drop support for BT client just because nobody is using an IM client on that architecture. Really really bummed about this decision.
A couple of reasons why it makes no sense: Mac users tend to keep their old gear around, just because. Everyone has their own reason. I have tons of friends who still have Graphite G4s, Quicksilvers, MDD and even G5s just lying around doing nothing but running as seedboxes. I personally have a G4 Cube that I use for that purpose and it serves it well. These machines are not redundant. Can't a see a good reason for me to shell out money for an intel-based seedbox, just because the Transmission dev team decided to drop support for PPC. I know I know, I can still use the last supported version, but the question is - how long? I'm user on what see dee and they just as many other private torrent trackers have strict rules that you have to follow. And one of those rules is using a specific BT client. For now we're safe, but when trackers decide it's time for everyone to move on - we're majorly effed.
I hope that Transmission dev team seriously reconsiders this move and goes back to making PPC versions side-by-side with intel versions.

[Jordan]

If you're wanting to run transmission 24x7 in a box-in-a-closet type setup, wouldn't it make more sense to build a copy of transmission-daemon and run that instead of the gui? AFAIK transmission-daemon is fine with or without ppc, it just needs someone who will commit to building it.

[Rudloff]

I have posted an universal Tiger binary here.

Users who like to build everything themselves should have a look at this.

[xmission]

There are millions of Power Macs still in use all over the world today. For example, I use my iBook to download and listen to podcasts which are intentionally distributed through the bittorrent network. And I expect it will still be good for the new bittorrent streaming protocol too. For those who still care about PPC support, I also want to mention that you can get an optimized build of Firefox 4 for PPC which outperforms Safari:

http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/

Now I can accept that Transmission will be rarely (if ever) updated for PPC in the future. I will just continue to use it as-is. However, I think the PPC build should quit offering to install updates that only work on Intel Macs. Why cant the auto-update feature distinguish between the two platforms? How about a "semi-final" Power Mac edition which only checks for PPC updates & protocol news, just in case you might have a reason to address PPC users once in a while?