[htop] Help bring htop 1.x to the Mac

  • From: Hisham <h@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: htop@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2014 10:30:57 -0300

Hello htop users!

I've been getting lo ts of bug reports of htop on the Mac. Trouble is,
people are running a 5-year old codebase, a fork of htop 0.8.2!

It was never a strict goal to make it Linux-only; it just happens to
be the only platform I run. Some users run it on FreeBSD using an
emulation layer which simulates a Linux-like /proc filesystem. I've
received and merged small patches to improve this.

On the Mac, however, the current situation is a bit different. There
are several versions out there, which as far as I can tell are all
based on a fork of htop 0.8.2 (which is five years old!), that was
implemented ripping out all Linux-specific code and replacing it with
Mac-only code. There is nothing wrong with that! The idea of free
software is that determined users should be able to do this.

The problem is that, due to the way this fork was done, it hasn't kept
up with the development and bugfixes of htop over the years. The
result is that I keep getting bug reports from Mac users, some of them
for very old bugs!

Unfortunately, I have very little free time to dedicate to htop
development (on Linux, that is!) and making a major port would take me
a lot of time. I'm a PhD student in Brazil, so the extra time I have
left from academic research is filled with freelance programming job,
teaching classes, you know the drill: making ends meet.

So I decided to start a fundraiser, so I could pick my own free
software project as a freelance programming job. If you use a Mac and
would like to have htop supported on this platform, you can allocate
my time so I can make the latest version of htop run natively and
cleanly on Mac terminals.

https://www.bountysource.com/fundraisers/554-mac-os-x-support-in-the-official-htop-1-x-tree

The idea is to write an OS abstraction layer, which will make it also
easier to port it to other operating systems.

Don't use a Mac? Any help spreading the word about this fundraiser is
also most welcome!

Thank you!

-- Hisham
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