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What have you done with a PowerPC today?

My bad - I found the Leopard stuff. It is a single line near the bottom of the install instructions.

Done, restarted and am trying to use PPCPorts now.

I am doing a port tree update to start with and it is really cranking my G5 Air Quad; one of the A CPUs (CPU A1) has hit as high as 72.9C, while all four CPUs were showing 75% to 85% occupancy. This is a good test of the new air cooling mechanism - the first "real world" build load it has been subject to.
 
OK, I am stuck right out of the starting gate!

I apparently successfully installed PPCPorts and all the associated tools, but whenever I try to build anything (I picked on Midnight Commander (mc) as a starting point) I get the following:

Picture 1.jpg


Does this tell anyone anything?

Immediately before it does the above however, it kicks out this warning:
Warning: archive_sites.conf: no urls set for macports_archives

I thought the whole point of this is that it computed the dependencies, built them all and then you eventually get the build that originally kicked the whole process off (mc in this case).

Thanks!
 
there is a circular dependency somewhere.

Port A depends on Port B.
Port B depends on Port C.
Port C depends on Port A.

so impossible situation.

Trick is to figure out what got screwed up.

Usual approach is to start with the simpler deps, pick any, like zstd, and start installing those until you hit the circular dep.
 
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mac57mac57 said:
Well... maybe today is NOT the day!

So far, the instructions I have found for PPCPorts all relate to Snow Leopard. I am running Leopard (Sorbet Leopard to be precise), and a lot of the steps simply don't work.

Is there a set of instructions for installing PPCPorts on Leopard itself, or do I need to fall back to MacPorts?
Click to expand...

You don’t need to do much in fact. Install Xcode, install bootstrap_curl, install PPCPorts (obviously, versions for Leopard). Then make this trivial edit of one text file as explained here.

If you had MacPorts installed, deactivate all ports before upgrading and delete /opt/local/etc/macports (alternatively, edit .config files manually after installation, since they are not overwritten).

Instructions for 10.6 exist because there you need special instructions due to Xcode being defunct LOL
 
mac57mac57 said:
OK, I am stuck right out of the starting gate!

I apparently successfully installed PPCPorts and all the associated tools, but whenever I try to build anything (I picked on Midnight Commander (mc) as a starting point) I get the following:

View attachment 2580929

Does this tell anyone anything?

Immediately before it does the above however, it kicks out this warning:
Warning: archive_sites.conf: no urls set for macports_archives

I thought the whole point of this is that it computed the dependencies, built them all and then you eventually get the build that originally kicked the whole process off (mc in this case).

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Ken is giving a good advice, install sequentially. Testing on 10.5 was limited (both on my side and MacPorts), so something might have been messed with dependencies.

Try doing this:
Code: 
sudo port deactivate active
sudo port -v sync
sudo port -v install gcc10-bootstrap
sudo port -v -N install cctools ld64
sudo port -v -N install libgcc14 gcc14
sudo port -v -N install python313 meson

If this works, proceed with the rest. If this fails, please let me know where exactly.
Installing gcc and python was working on 10.5 last time it was tried. I am away from powerpc hardware until 28th, so cannot check myself right now. (Unless someone gives me ssh / gsocket access to a machine with 10.5.)

P. S. It is not clear if you already have gcc10-bootstrap installed or it got left out of the chain somehow (which will create a problem). It is used to build gcc14, so it must come prior to it.
Also make sure this is done: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...pc.2462897/page-6?post=34289517#post-34289517 (I just had no time to make a new pkg where this is included).
 
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mac57mac57 said:
Given that I am using (Sorbet) Leopard, and plan to continue to do so, is it simply less error prone to use MacPorts instead of PPCPorts?
Click to expand...

I don’t really want to convince anyone to switch to using my fork. All changes are transparent, you can see what differs in the base as compared to upstream MacPorts (see sysutils/MacPorts) and, if desired, pick patches selectively. It is also possible in principle to use PPCPorts overlay with upstream base, though some things will not work as intended, so it is not advised and won’t be supported.
You can have an idea what is likely broken in upstream by looking at what is fixed in PPCPorts. It may or may not affect any given user.
I do not think any package manager has some stuff specifically for “Sorbet” Leopard (and not sure whether any is needed, since it is essentially just 10.5.8 with some cosmetic customizations), so in this sense no difference is expected.
Upstream MacPorts has no buildbots with Leopard, so if anything is tested at all, it is up to maintainers. Given that IMO a lot of stuff is broken, such testing is limited at best. At the same time I also do not verify every update and every fix on 10.5: I can only reasonably guarantee that I will address specific breakages, if such are reported. Upstream MacPorts will not work for ppc64 builds (toolchain is broken), if that matters.

P. S. Given that several people here used PPCPorts on 10.5, I believe, it should be functional. One thing which is wrong now is compiler choice (due to this recent commit), but fixing that is trivial and referred to above. The last time I saw a circular dependency issue was after libiconv update, but that was fixed in these two commits (1, 2).
 
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What have I done? Prepared the two 17" Powerbooks for sale. The 12 will probably go too, ending my minor dalliance with PowerPC. Nice machines, but, in the end, they're getting no use and I need to reduce the sheer amount of 'stuff' that fills the cupboards...
 
Have you had any of these from new, or where they ‘fix up project’ Mac’s?
I could never sell my G4PB as it was my first Mac….😬
 
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Doq said:
have you considered looking in to MacPorts with PPCPorts patches?
Click to expand...
Not really. I did try out some of the Firefox forks (InterWebPPC) and they ran worse than modern(-ish) Firefox or other browsers on LinuxPPC for even less compatibility. The other issue is that Linux allows me to run any GPU up to TeraScale while on OSX I'd be limited to those that got Mac Firmware, which in my country are very hard to find and so I'm limited to a lowly GeForce 6200, which e.g. for playing back high-res video is nearly unusable whereas on Linux I get hardware acceleration.
That said, by "being truly useable without Linux" I meant in the realm of being a home server. Hosting modern versions of MiniDLNA, Samba, Python webapps etc are not something I'd want to do on an old version of OS X. Would it be better on a Raspberry or an old Ryzen? Sure, but then it's no fun :)
 
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koutakun said:
Not really. I did try out some of the Firefox forks (InterWebPPC) and they ran worse than modern(-ish) Firefox or other browsers on LinuxPPC for even less compatibility. The other issue is that Linux allows me to run any GPU up to TeraScale while on OSX I'd be limited to those that got Mac Firmware, which in my country are very hard to find and so I'm limited to a lowly GeForce 6200, which e.g. for playing back high-res video is nearly unusable whereas on Linux I get hardware acceleration.
Click to expand...

High-res vids are usable on the late G5s, and normally their GPUs do have some hardware acceleration (there is no VideoToolBox etc., those appeared in 10.7+).

The Quad (and I recall 2.3 DC too) play 4k tolerably. Lower resolutions are handled with no pains.
(But true, you can use a bit newer GPU on Linux.)

koutakun said:
That said, by "being truly useable without Linux" I meant in the realm of being a home server. Hosting modern versions of MiniDLNA, Samba, Python webapps etc are not something I'd want to do on an old version of OS X.
Click to expand...

What is the issue on macOS with these? Unless you require something in rust or go, everything else should work. Sure you do not need Qt6 on a server.
 
Today I’ve decided to take a page out of MichealMJD’s book and use my boredom to install and upgrade Windows as far as I can. Except I’m doing it on a PowerBook G4. I started at 3.1, and am on 98 now.
This is a 1GHz TiBook, with VPC 6 running in OS 9 so I feel like its fastest possible way to do this, lmao.
The goal is XP, and if that goes well maybe 7 but that’ll be pushing it.

Why? No idea. Because I can
 

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Project Alice said:
Today I’ve decided to take a page out of MichealMJD’s book and use my boredom to install and upgrade Windows as far as I can. Except I’m doing it on a PowerBook G4. I started at 3.1, and am on 98 now.
This is a 1GHz TiBook, with VPC 6 running in OS 9 so I feel like its fastest possible way to do this, lmao.
The goal is XP, and if that goes well maybe 7 but that’ll be pushing it.

Why? No idea. Because I can
Click to expand...
I've found Windows 2000 to be the sensible limit - I've installed Micro XP before for the odd app necessity but it's slow, full XP or beyond is merely POC.
 
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Dronecatcher said:
I've found Windows 2000 to be the sensible limit - I've installed Micro XP before for the odd app necessity but it's slow, full XP or beyond is merely POC.
Click to expand...
Yeah that tracks. This isn’t a sensible thing I’m doing though lol.
98 finished and then I had to leave for thanksgiving at my parents place. But I’ll be continuing this.

95 and 98 are surprisingly quick though. VPC 6 and below are faster and OS 9 has a lot less overhead. I’ve ran 98 under VPC 7 on a faster G4 than this before and it was always dog slow. I think Microsoft purposely made that application worse.
 
Project Alice said:
Today I’ve decided to take a page out of MichealMJD’s book and use my boredom to install and upgrade Windows as far as I can. Except I’m doing it on a PowerBook G4. I started at 3.1, and am on 98 now.
This is a 1GHz TiBook, with VPC 6 running in OS 9 so I feel like its fastest possible way to do this, lmao.
The goal is XP, and if that goes well maybe 7 but that’ll be pushing it.

Why? No idea. Because I can
Click to expand...
Small update. I started over. I got up to Windows 2000, but the install was somewhat borked. I'm not sure if it was from expanding the partition beyond the original 2GB, or just Windows rot from in-place upgrading so many times. The Win 2000 install also made me skip a bunch of things, all appeared to be related to IE 5 though.
XP kept failing with some registry error stating access denied. I now have a better plan in place to resize the 2GB to the full 60GB of the VHD so, once I get back up to 2000 I'll try again and see what happens.
 
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A P3D file format viewer I've been making for PPC Leopard. Simple Cocoa app with an OpenGL view that loads MLOD P3D files and associated PAA textures from Bohemia Interactive games (Arma, DayZ). I work on DayZ mods for PC so I was already pretty familiar with the formats. Got bored and wanted to see if my Quad could handle Arma models. May release it once I fix some bugs if anyone wants to play around with it. Kinda new to this so idk what else to say. I used Macports to install git and some other basic stuff I needed. Pretty cool considering it's a 20 year old machine.
 
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srp said:
View attachment 2584086View attachment 2584087
A P3D file format viewer I've been making for PPC Leopard. Simple Cocoa app with an OpenGL view that loads MLOD P3D files and associated PAA textures from Bohemia Interactive games (Arma, DayZ). I work on DayZ mods for PC so I was already pretty familiar with the formats. Got bored and wanted to see if my Quad could handle Arma models. May release it once I fix some bugs if anyone wants to play around with it. Kinda new to this so idk what else to say. I used Macports to install git and some other basic stuff I needed. Pretty cool considering it's a 20 year old machine.
Click to expand...

Once it works as you want it to, consider submitting a port to https://github.com/macos-powerpc/powerpc-ports
 
barracuda156 said:
Once it works as you want it to, consider submitting a port to https://github.com/macos-powerpc/powerpc-ports
Click to expand...
Will do, thanks! I've been keeping an eye on your developments in here for a while now and planned on getting PPCPorts configured soon. Happy to actually have something to contribute in return.

I've also been working on a chat tool for AI models that supports OpenAI, Claude, Gemini and local OpenAI-style APIs with image generation support, Markdown formatting etc.. I took a look at that "LegacyAI" app recently and I wasn't too impressed with the shareware model (although I do understand why they do it like that) - this is just as simple as plug in your API keys or your local inference server and go. I could see this being more useful to the average user than my other project.
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srp said:
Will do, thanks! I've been keeping an eye on your developments in here for a while now and planned on getting PPCPorts configured soon. Happy to actually have something to contribute in return.

I've also been working on a chat tool for AI models that supports OpenAI, Claude, Gemini and local OpenAI-style APIs with image generation support, Markdown formatting etc.. I took a look at that "LegacyAI" app recently and I wasn't too impressed with the shareware model (although I do understand why they do it like that) - this is just as simple as plug in your API keys or your local inference server and go. I could see this being more useful to the average user than my other project. View attachment 2584349View attachment 2584348
Click to expand...

Besides, any way to support GitHub’s Copilot? That would be very useful, since GitHub directly is unusable
 
barracuda156 said:
Besides, any way to support GitHub’s Copilot? That would be very useful, since GitHub directly is unusable
Click to expand...
Good question! I'm not too sure but from just doing a quick search it doesn't look like Copilot has a typical OpenAI style API, so even a simple chat feature will probably take a lot of work, let alone any kind of tool use or agentic features. I have used Codex to help me with the P3D viewer project and my workflow is basically prompting and committing through Cursor on my Windows PC, then pulling the commit on the Mac, testing and making changes/improvements where needed, and then committing upstream directly from the Mac. It works surprisingly well and I often forget I'm using 20 year old hardware.
 
srp said:
Good question! I'm not too sure but from just doing a quick search it doesn't look like Copilot has a typical OpenAI style API, so even a simple chat feature will probably take a lot of work, let alone any kind of tool use or agentic features. I have used Codex to help me with the P3D viewer project and my workflow is basically prompting and committing through Cursor on my Windows PC, then pulling the commit on the Mac, testing and making changes/improvements where needed, and then committing upstream directly from the Mac. It works surprisingly well and I often forget I'm using 20 year old hardware.
Click to expand...

That’s what I was kinda doing with Copilot and GitHub when working on some fixes: do it on a modern Mac, push from it, pull on a PowerPC, test, repeat. But if I could do it from a PowerPC directly, it would be more convenient (just for that chat is fine, I don’t let/want LLM to commit anything by itself). Copilot provides decent functionality via their educational program, so I can access good models for free.
 
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