MacPorts Guide: universal_archs setting not defined for macOS 10.13 - 10.15

[hamishmb (Hamish Mcintyre-Bhatty)]

Hi there,

I noticed today that the MacPorts Guide doesn't say what the universal_archs values are for macOS 10.13 - 10.15, unlike all other versions. I guess this can be assumed to be "x86_64 i386" as for 10.6 - 10.13, but I don't want to submit a pull request without knowing. I came across this as I'm doing my first experiments with MacPorts on an M1 Mac now.

If someone lets me know that these values are correct then I'll happily do the pull request.

Hamish

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

The guide says:

universal_archs
The machine architectures to use for +universal variant (multiple entries must be space delimited). Options include: arm64, i386, ppc, ppc64, x86_64
Default: arm64 x86_64 for macOS 11 and later, x86_64 i386 for 10.6 through 10.13, ppc i386 for 10.5 and earlier

That's accurate. On 10.14 and 10.15, universal builds are not possible. You can only build non-universally, for x86_64.

[hamishmb (Hamish Mcintyre-Bhatty)]

That makes sense, but shouldn't it then say "x86_64 (only) for 10.14 and 10.15" or similar?

At the moment it's just leaving the default for 10.14 and 10.15 unspecified.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

We're talking about the documentation of universal_archs. universal_archs is only used for universal building. Universal building is not possible on 10.14 or 10.15 so the value of universal_archs on those systems is irrelevant.

[hamishmb (Hamish Mcintyre-Bhatty)]

Yeah, only just got that part somehow.

Still, might be good to say here that universal building isn't possible on 10.14 and 10.15 - seeing as 10.14 can still run 32-bit apps, I had assumed that one could target i386 with the 10.14 SDK until now. I didn't quite realise the implications so I imagine that maybe others won't either, given almost all versions can do universal builds?

At first glance, it just looks like 10.14 and 10.15 have been forgotten.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Replying to hamishmb:

I had assumed that one could target i386 with the 10.14 SDK until now

For reference:

​https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode-10-release-notes

• The macOS 10.14 SDK no longer contains support for compiling 32-bit applications. If developers need to compile for i386, Xcode 9.4 or earlier is required. (39858111)