[Echelon9]

Finally got around to updating our video library Frameworks to 64 bit, which was the one remaining issue to compile FS2_Open.app as a Universal (32/64 bit) application on Mac OS X 10.6+.

This is tested with the Xcode 4 project file on r9219 and later. May be possible to build 32 and 64 bit with Xcode 3.x, but I don't know.

[chief1983]

Currently, the 'universal' Xcode3 project builds PPC 32bit and i386.  Adding x86-64 would increase the already long compile time by 50%, and probably not help many people this late in the game, so it's probably not worth it.  I think the only reason to keep it around at this point is because it can build PPC, but maybe we'll just do minimal maintenance on it from now on.

[Echelon9]

Sure, sounds reasonable.

[jg18]

The Xcode3 project also allows support for OS X 10.4 and 10.5, since it uses the 10.4 SDK. Xcode 4 is 10.6+ only AFAIK.

Reminds me of why I'm reluctant to switch completely to Xcode 4 on my own machines, since that'd make wxLauncher OS X releases 10.6+ only, although I guess 10.4 and 10.5 users could always use Soulstorm's launcher. Current official wxLauncher OS X builds are 10.5+ i386 only.

Also brings up the seemingly often asked question of when does the SCP stop supporting 10.4/PPC (or 10.5 for that matter). If a Tiger or PPC user had a support issue, would anyone be able to help them?

[Echelon9]

Also brings up the seemingly often asked question of when does the SCP stop supporting 10.4/PPC (or 10.5 for that matter). If a Tiger or PPC user had a support issue, would anyone be able to help them?

Practically, it would be hard to render support to users having trouble with those systems due to the limited number of devs with the same, but that is a different issue to knowingly moving the default build environment on such that 10.4/10.5/PPC were no longer supported.

Chief1983 and I looked at the stats on Mac web traffic by OS X version, and came to a view that we should keep 10.5 for some more time. Xcode4 project files will be the staging ground for feature enhancements at the same time.

There's also a related issue that regardless of the software running on these systems, the hardware is getting pretty old - particularly on the graphics front.

[Admiral LSD]

I've had all this running for a few months now, I just never got around to getting the builds out there for proper testing. I was planning to start a thread to call for testers in a few weeks when I had some more time on my hands, but you beat me to it.

Regarding the continuing support for PPC and pre-10.6 versions of OS X, it's not really worth the effort to be perfectly blunt. A lot of the frameworks you rely on have already either dropped support for it or are in the process not to mention trying to ensure clean compilation of the code across at least three major versions of the IDE/compiler is a major headache, even when you have access to them all for testing. Are the numbers really there to make it genuinely worthwhile?

[chief1983]

I've been constantly pointing out that Valathil's deferred lighting code won't compile on the 10.4 SDK, as it simply doesn't have the extensions.  I believe bumping the Xcode 3 project to 10.5 SDK (I think with a 10.4 target even) will allow it to compile.  So if that makes it to trunk, it's going to break the support for the 10.4 SDK if we don't get some workarounds in place for it.  But I think supporting Tiger at this point is not really necessary, although I think PPC would be nice to support somewhat at least for now.

[Darklord42]

It's nice but to be frankly honest, i don't think anyone still using a G5 these days would be a stranger to being left in the dust.  There are always older builds they can use, and it's not like their hardware can keep up with what people are doing these days anyway with FSO.  I have a core duo 2 macbook pro from five years ago and I still have to turn the graphics down to get diaspora to run.  It's not like we are talking about the previous generation of computer, more like 3 generations back. Nor is apple making it any easier with every OS update.  With the latest version of xcode they even removed the 10.6 sdk right out from under me.  (the swines) There are still people using G3s with OS9, are you going to support them too?

[chief1983]

Yeah I'm still symlinking the 10.6 SDK to the one in my 4.1 folder.  We haven't bumped the SDK on the Xcode 4 project yet so until someone feels comfortable doing and testing that it's the only way to use the latest Xcode