In principle ports are supposed for check for AltiVec support, but if something does not, it should be fixed for G3.
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What's the current state of MacPorts on Tiger?
- Thread starter danielktdoranie
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In principle ports are supposed for check for AltiVec support, but if something does not, it should be fixed for G3.
Summary of the state of Macports/PowerPC Ports on Tiger:
The following ports need fallbacks or to be fixed. I will note qt4-mac only fails to destroot, it builds fine. The Macports version does install successfully.
sudo port -n upgrade outdated and not atomicparsley and not doxygen and not gnupg2 and not gpgme and not gtksourceview4 and not libass and not libbdplus and not libsamplerate and not libsecret and not libuv and not libvpx and not libxkbcommon-x11 and not openal-soft and not openldap and not orc and not poppler and not portaudio and not pulseaudio and not qt4-mac and not supertuxkart and not mplayer and not mupdf and not aom and not highway and not leptonica and not libsdl2_mixer and not ninja
Of the 75 most requested ports in Macports, the following do not work on Tiger:
9. nmap (failed)
18. gnupg2 (needs fallback)
19. go (known to be broken)
31. xorg-server (known to be broken)
33. pandoc (build failed)
36. ninja (needs fallback or patches rebased)
42. cargo (known to be broken)
43. rust (known to be broken)
46. emacs (failed)
47. watch (failed)
54. gh (not ppc compatible)
60. mc (not tested)
61. ripgrep (not ppc compatible)
65. gnutar (build failure)
67. poppler (fails even without boost variant)
70. texlive (dependency issue)
75. mtr (build failure)
There is still quite a bit to test and fix, but I thought it might help people to know about 80% of ports work.
The following ports need fallbacks or to be fixed. I will note qt4-mac only fails to destroot, it builds fine. The Macports version does install successfully.
sudo port -n upgrade outdated and not atomicparsley and not doxygen and not gnupg2 and not gpgme and not gtksourceview4 and not libass and not libbdplus and not libsamplerate and not libsecret and not libuv and not libvpx and not libxkbcommon-x11 and not openal-soft and not openldap and not orc and not poppler and not portaudio and not pulseaudio and not qt4-mac and not supertuxkart and not mplayer and not mupdf and not aom and not highway and not leptonica and not libsdl2_mixer and not ninja
Of the 75 most requested ports in Macports, the following do not work on Tiger:
9. nmap (failed)
18. gnupg2 (needs fallback)
19. go (known to be broken)
31. xorg-server (known to be broken)
33. pandoc (build failed)
36. ninja (needs fallback or patches rebased)
42. cargo (known to be broken)
43. rust (known to be broken)
46. emacs (failed)
47. watch (failed)
54. gh (not ppc compatible)
60. mc (not tested)
61. ripgrep (not ppc compatible)
65. gnutar (build failure)
67. poppler (fails even without boost variant)
70. texlive (dependency issue)
75. mtr (build failure)
There is still quite a bit to test and fix, but I thought it might help people to know about 80% of ports work.
Expecting go, cargo, rust and pandoc to build was radical
(as well as their dependents like ripgrep or gh).They are broken for much newer systems even on x86.
Pandoc may be buildable, some older version of it, which is compatible with ghc 7.x (assuming that builds, to begin with). Haskell is a pain in the bottom generally, and fixing this will probably be non-trivial.
Unless you really need something which strictly requires pandoc, it is likely better to find a suitable replacement for its functionality. There are some apps in normal languages which do something pretty similar. (I have just used such replacement with rb-rtfm-filemanager, worked good enough for the purpose.)
The rest should work, this or that way, i.e. either with some fixes or fallbacks.
P. S. Emacs is weird, and I don’t understand its failures. For example, both release and devel subports fail to build for me on 10.6.8 with a bus error during the bootstrap, however both build fine on 10a190, and I have no idea why that is the case. (Pre-built apps from 10a190 work on 10.6.8, thankfully, but hey…)
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I don't really have uses for any of the broken ones, I just wanted to see if Macports on PPC was providing what Macports users in general seem to want.Expecting go, cargo, rust and pandoc to build was radical
They are broken for much newer systems even on x86.
Pandoc may be buildable, some older version of it, which is compatible with ghc 7.x (assuming that builds, to begin with). Haskell is a pain in the bottom generally, and fixing this will probably be non-trivial.
Unless you really need something which strictly requires pandoc, it is likely better to find a suitable replacement for its functionality. There are some apps in normal languages which do something pretty similar. (I have just used such replacement with rb-rtfm-filemanager, worked good enough for the purpose.)
The rest should work, this or that way, i.e. either with some fixes or fallbacks.
P. S. Emacs is weird, and I don’t understand its failures. For example, both release and devel subports fail to build for me on 10.6.8 with a bus error during the bootstrap, however both build fine on 10a190, and I have no idea why that is the case. (Pre-built apps from 10a190 work on 10.6.8, thankfully, but hey…)
And I didn't expect rust, cargo, and go to build, but since my main limitation this last weekend was focused time at the computer, I wanted to do something mindless.
It's likely fallbacks exist for a few of these, but emacs is the only one I might spend that effort on. I am more concerned with end user software, while it appears most people who submit stats to Macports prioritize development tools.
If anyone wants to do a static repo for Tiger, this gives a date with data. Similarly, if anyone wants software and is curious if it will work on Tiger, this and checking my server can save time and guesswork.
After gathering this data on the state of macports on Tiger, I think it is likely better to take an overlay repo approach than a static approach. For the ports that need fallbacks that are not currently in PowerPC ports, I should probably start a repo on GitHub with the older portfiles I built from. For those already in PPC ports, I can do pull requests like I did for gawk (thanks again for accepting that one).
It was nice to discover that lynx builds. That's another web browser option
Does retawq btw? https://github.com/macos-powerpc/powerpc-ports/tree/main/www/retawq
On a side note, but related: one text editor that is badly broken (builds but segfaults) but may be of interest for real-life users is Neovim.
Retawq builds! Thank you for that. I will have to test it with Github. Unfortunately I rarely can test during the week, as air conditioning is not consistent where I am for work. Luckily, it should be cool enough I can take a Powerbook with me in a month or so. I will test further on the weekend.
Neovim does seem very cool. I will see if it builds on Tiger this weekend. Of course, if it doesn't work on 10.5.8/10.6.8, I would be shocked if it worked on 10.4.11. I am mostly hoping to bring Tiger up to near parity with 10.5.8 as far as ports go, and maybe create ports for some interesting open source software that builds out of the box.