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Has all modern software development moved to the SL-PPC alpha?

Doq

Doq

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 8, 2019
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The Lab DX
I didn't want to poke this bear out of fear of starting a flame war, but I don't know what to do or where to go. I also didn't want to clog up the What have you done with a PowerPC today? thread any more than I already have, so I'll split off to this thread.

I started to roll together a MacPorts setup on Leopard to install and run Qmmp to see if the skinned interface works and I have a music player that fits my needs, but it just fell apart instantly. So I went back and looked at the posts and missed the important bit: the 10.6.8 about box.

Unfortunately, I cannot switch to using the SL-PPC alpha as some of the broken functionality is a dealbreaker for me-- I actually regularly use sleep and require a standard working network, for instance. Not to mention that I've started doing actual work on the Companion now instead of simply having it as a PPC tinker machine.

Just for posterity, I tried installing the custom PPCPorts build and it didn't let me (it was for SL after all, not for Leopard).

Am I SOL? Is there no longer any community support for ol' reliable Leopard?
 
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I still use MacPorts and compile stuff on Tiger PPC.
You are basically on your own, you have to find why things don't work manually and figure it out yourself.
 
Does the Snow Leopard alpha actually offer any benefits over vanilla Leopard other than to brag that you installed SL? It seems like such an early build that the features which made SL different from Leopard weren’t even implemented yet.
 
Doq said:
When I refer to "SL-PPC alpha", I actually mean the Alpha 5 build of the 10.6.8 project.
Click to expand...
There was definitely never any 10.6.8 for PowerPC. I heard about the leaked early build of Snow Leopard which was missing most of the released 10.6 features as they were obviously developed later and Intel-only.
 
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It is quite an impressive project and I'd love nothing more than to see it reach Flawless status.

It's just not for me currently.
 
redheeler said:
Does the Snow Leopard alpha actually offer any benefits over vanilla Leopard other than to brag that you installed SL? It seems like such an early build that the features which made SL different from Leopard weren’t even implemented yet.
Click to expand...

It does. It already did at 10a190 stage, it does more so with 10.6.8.

The SDK and kernel are of 10.6, so [almost all] 10.6.8 features are available. An exception which I can remember is OpenGL framework (closed-source, 10.6.8 version has no ppc slices).

There is a number of ports which build for 10.6.x ppc but not 10.5.8 (forget Tiger, that has a lot of broken stuff). There are a very few ports where the situation is reverse, since the code is old and relies on some behavior specific to 10.5.8 (old GHC < 7.7 builds for 10.5.8 but not for 10.6.8, at least not easily).

It is quite common for software to assume that macOS has libdispatch, which does not exist prior to 10.6, and in many cases fallbacks do not exist. All that will be broken for < 10.6 (regardless of the arch, of course).
 
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Doq said:
I started to roll together a MacPorts setup on Leopard to install and run Qmmp to see if the skinned interface works and I have a music player that fits my needs, but it just fell apart instantly. So I went back and looked at the posts and missed the important bit: the 10.6.8 about box.
Click to expand...

If you post the log, I can fix the build for Leopard.

Doq said:
Just for posterity, I tried installing the custom PPCPorts build and it didn't let me (it was for SL after all, not for Leopard).
Click to expand...

PPCPorts work perfectly fine on the stock 10.5.8. Not all ports will build (but more will build than with official MacPorts) and testing is occasional, but the thing itself works and 10.5 is supported.

You need these two:

Doq said:
Am I SOL? Is there no longer any community support for ol' reliable Leopard?
Click to expand...

Well, MacPorts supports it in principle but does not test anything in practice and break every next port on every second update.
I do support 10.5 in principle and try not to break anything for it, but testing is limited, since it already takes hours daily to support 10.6 ppc. However opened issues will be attended. If something does not work, please report it to https://github.com/macos-powerpc/powerpc-ports/issues
 
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This might have been covered already in the lengthy Snow Leopard PPC thread, but I am thinking; Are there any/many 3rd party Mac OS X native GUI apps that one could potentially gain to run now on 10.6.8 PPC A5 that were not available to 10.5.8 PowerPC?

Is there anything from that era which had a 10.6 min deployment target that could be potentially re-built (without much / any porting effort) now on ppc arch?

I've just had a look at some of my Snow Leopard Macs to see if anything stands out for me where I believe we can likely build from source for 10.6.8 PPC:

* Audacity 2.2.2 (Leopard PPC was 2.0.6)
* Bean 3.2.5 (Leopard was 3.1.1)
* Cyberduck 4.6.5 (Leopard was 4.3.1)
* Handbrake 0.10.5 (Leopard was 0.9.5)
* VLC 2.2.8 (Leopard was 2.0.10)

Anything else come to mind?

I wonder if any Mac devs would be willing to attempt to rebuild their Intel-only software from that era from source with 10.6.8 PPC as a target.
 
AphoticD said:
This might have been covered already in the lengthy Snow Leopard PPC thread, but I am thinking; Are there any/many 3rd party Mac OS X native GUI apps that one could potentially gain to run now on 10.6.8 PPC A5 that were not available to 10.5.8 PowerPC?

Is there anything from that era which had a 10.6 min deployment target that could be potentially re-built (without much / any porting effort) now on ppc arch?
Click to expand...

Probably, though arguably not much. IMO it usually makes better sense to build modern versions (if not the latests, then w/e is feasible) with a non-Cocoa GUI, rather than almost as archaic, but with Cocoa.

Two examples which come to mind are X server, which can be built with libdispatch support on 10.6 ppc (it uses Cocoa) and Qt4 (which can be built with Cocoa backend on 10.6). These are not theoretical examples, they actually work.

AphoticD said:
I've just had a look at some of my Snow Leopard Macs to see if anything stands out for me where I believe we can likely build from source for 10.6.8 PPC:

* Audacity 2.2.2 (Leopard PPC was 2.0.6)
Click to expand...

Audacity 3.7.2 may be buildable but needs some work. Something was failing last time I tried, and the issue is pending. See: https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/8556#issuecomment-2769001984

AphoticD said:
* Bean 3.2.5 (Leopard was 3.1.1)
Click to expand...

No idea what it is :) If there is a source, can take a look.

AphoticD said:
* Cyberduck 4.6.5 (Leopard was 4.3.1)
Click to expand...

Does it even work? Is it open-source?
I use FileZilla for sFTP, the latest release of it, and not sure it makes sense to bother with another client.

AphoticD said:
* Handbrake 0.10.5 (Leopard was 0.9.5)
Click to expand...

You reminded me about this. It will be a painful thing to do, likely. My idea was to fix the current version with GTK GUI. See: https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/discussions/6321

AphoticD said:
* VLC 2.2.8 (Leopard was 2.0.10)
Click to expand...

In all honesty, VLC’s codebase is a total mess. What advantage would it offer, that too at some pre-historic version?
I have built much later VLC versions on ppc (with X11 backend), and now think it was a total waste of time. Pretty much any alternative will have better performance, stability and pleasant user experience.

QMPlay2 is way better than VLC. mpv is better than VLC, and I have the latest version of it working now.
mplayer is nice and perhaps better fitting for resource-constrained systems. VLC belongs to a trash bin :)
 
barracuda156 said:
PCPorts work perfectly fine on the stock 10.5.8. Not all ports will build (but more will build than with official MacPorts) and testing is occasional, but the thing itself works and 10.5 is supported.

You need these two:
https://macos-powerpc.org/PPCPorts/curl-Leopard-8.13.0-ppc_ppc64.zip https://macos-powerpc.org/PPCPorts/PPCPorts-Leopard-2.10.7-ppc_ppc64.zip
Click to expand...
Oh! I must've missed this. It wasn't listed on the main page of the macos-powerpc.org website anywhere so I just concluded that it only worked for SL PPC.
barracuda156 said:
If you post the log, I can fix the build for Leopard.
Click to expand...
Sure. After another grueling attempt with the now PPCPorts stack, including gcc14 (probably didn't need to do this, but sunk cost fallacy happened-- I was already 60 hours in by the time that popped in), it looks like dav1d dropped out.

Code: 
Error: Failed to patch dav1d: command execution failed
Error: See /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_macports_release_tarballs_ports_multimedia_dav1d/dav1d/main.log [EDITOR'S NOTE: ATTACHED] for details.
Error: Follow https://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets if you believe there is a bug.
Error: Processing of port qmmp failed
 

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