Churn, especially WRT Mac...

[westfw]

I decided to give KICAD another chance on my main computer.  A Mac (actually, a "Hackintosh"), running MacOS 10.13.6
The most recent KICAD won't run on 10.13.Older versions of KICAD will run, but apparently cant' read (OSHW) files generated with the newer versions. :-(
While I realize that maintaining backward compatibility can be a trap, this seems a bit extreme in the opposite direction :-(  10.13 (High Sierra) is only about 3 years old :-(

[MitjaN]

You might want to read the topic at:
https://forum.kicad.info/t/compiling-kicad-for-macos-high-sierra/25186/14

[Bassman59]

I decided to give KICAD another chance on my main computer.  A Mac (actually, a "Hackintosh"), running MacOS 10.13.6
The most recent KICAD won't run on 10.13.Older versions of KICAD will run, but apparently cant' read (OSHW) files generated with the newer versions. :-(
While I realize that maintaining backward compatibility can be a trap, this seems a bit extreme in the opposite direction :-(  10.13 (High Sierra) is only about 3 years old :-(

Kicad has never guaranteed that older versions can read files created by newer versions.

[Bassman59]

While I realize that maintaining backward compatibility can be a trap, this seems a bit extreme in the opposite direction :-(  10.13 (High Sierra) is only about 3 years old :-(

There was a lot of discussion about this among the developers, and basically it came down to dealing with the moving targets of the dependencies.

[delfinom]

While I realize that maintaining backward compatibility can be a trap, this seems a bit extreme in the opposite direction :-(  10.13 (High Sierra) is only about 3 years old :-(

There was a lot of discussion about this among the developers, and basically it came down to dealing with the moving targets of the dependencies.

Apple is really the driver here. The newer macOS can't build for the old ones too easily. Our only macOS packager doesn't have the luxury of multiple machines. Apple has declared 10.13 obsolete on January 31st 2021 as well.

You can still build for 10.13 if you desire, it's open source, it's just not something that can be officially provided.