Re: macos status

"Chun Tian (binghe)" <[email protected]> Sat, 1 Mar 2025 15:04:53 +1100
Newsgroups	gmane.lisp.gcl.devel
Organization	The Australian National University
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On 01/03/25 06:23, Camm Maguire wrote:
> Greetings!
> 
> Raymond Toy <[email protected]> writes:
> 
>> On Fri, Feb 28, 2025 at 6:51 AM Camm Maguire <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>  Greetings, and great to hear from you both again!
>>
>>  I've posted this query several places, and I've received another comment
>>  indicating that macports is for older machines (i.e. 'retro people' :-))
>>  and homebrew more modern.  If macports could support both older and
>>  newer versions, it makes sense to focus there.  However, like you, my
>>  mac development environment is stuck at Catalina for reasons we've
>>  discussed.  Everything works there for GCL, both 2.6 and 2.7, but I am
>>  worried about support for up to date machines.  I have yet to try
>>  Kirill's remote ssh into a github action, which may be the solution, but
>>  ideally there would be a workaround by now to get a virtualbox under
>>  linux or the like to run a more modern macosx.  Perfect would be remote
>>  access to a modern mac.  Thoughts?
>>
>> How modern?  I've set up a virtualbox on linux to run macosx but only
>> for intel.  I think that means 10.15 or so.  If you want the new ARM
>> chips, I don't think virtualbox can do that.  I think you need to use
>> qemu for that.  I've never succeeded on getting qemu to run anything.
>>
> 
> Yes, I run Catalina, aka 11.3, but current mac is at Sequoia, aka 16.  I
> have been told that attempting to upgrade this virtual box beyond where
> it is will render it unusable/inaccessible due to a policy decision by
> Apple.
> 
> Take care,
> 

Your words are so confused to me. macOS Catalina is 10.15.x (that's what I'm
using), which is Intel only. macOS Big Sur is 11.x, which can be either Intel or
ARM64 versions.  And macOS Sequoia is 15 instead of 16. What exactly version are
you using?

By the way, running macOS on non-Apple hardware is never allowed/supported by
Apple. People who can do this must have modified macOS software to bypass some
tests, thus you cannot expect it still working after upgrading to a newer macOS
(you should never upgrade such a macOS VM, because even a minor update may break
it.)

I don't understand people trying to run any ARM macOS in virtual machines on
non-Apple hardware, because Apple hardware is available from Apple at affordable
prices (e.g. an entry level Mac mini).

The only important case for running macOS on non-Apple hardware is to have an
Intel macOS environment for running legacy Mac software when Intel Mac is no
longer available from Apple.  This will be my case in the future, but currently
I have two working Intel MacBook Pro (one running 10.15, the other running 11).
If one day they are both dead, I may start trying to run unofficial macOS VM on
Intel PC. (But I've heard Parallels Desktop has just started to support Intel
macOS VM on ARM Mac hardware.)

Any way, for the future of GCL on macOS, I think the only important matter is to
get GCL working on recent macOS versions (if not latest) on ARM Mac only.
There's no need to do anything for Intel macOS higher than 10.15 because the
remaining such environment (mostly Intel Mac hardware) will soon all dead.

The ARM Mac hardware running recent macOS is always available from Apple at
affordable prices. If Camm need some financial support, it will be my pleasure
to purchase one from Apple and ship to his home address (in US? I guess). Please
contact me in private if you need. I don't fully understand GCL's source code
but I can do this for sure!

Regards,

Chun Tian
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