The siren call of OSX is getting stronger... we will be hearing more calls to support it. And probably soon! We should at least understand more or less the load of adding another OS:
- Maintenance of another set of extlibs
- Keeping all the code building on another OS - sure, gcc is gcc is gcc, but it didn't always used to be the case (eg Sun had different problems from linux).
- Running Release Manager & sorting through the results (so, load on both providing/maintaining the service and on the Release Manager person, eg Toby and Jim)
- Running system tests
- Documentation of everything to do with a new OS - additional branches of the workbook (where there are windows, linux now). I presume we cannot just lump OSX and linux together.
- User support on the OS
Some random current facts:
- SLAC/SCS does not currently support MACs, but Kavli is trying to change that
- Kavli has a ~14 box MAC cluster in SCS that runs LSF
- The SSC expects to have to support MAC for SciTools
The MAC cool factor is way up these days, so everyone is wanting to jump on board. What is your opinion on whether we can afford to be cool?