2020r2.1 does not build for Mac?

I selected Mac and my app would not compile for Mac but did build for Windows and Linux?

I am confused.

Gotta love exact problem descriptions. What did you do? What happened? Did you try with a new project?

On Windows?

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On Windows?

Yes, Amy is:

I am looking to deploy my app and the Deploy button is faded. I do have a cloud server. Is there something that I am missing? Windows 10 Xojo 2020 Release 2.1

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I am writing on Windows 10 64bit.
I am running Xojo 2020r2.1 - chose a Desktop build.
I tried this with a blank new project called ddd
image
Above: Mac OS selected


Above: MacOS not able to Build
And there it is, no mac OS allowed.

You can only build macOS applications while using Xojo on a macOS computer:
https://documentation.xojo.com/topics/application_structure/coding_guidelines_for_64-bit_apps.html#Other_64-bit_Information

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Once upon a time, one could do 32-bit Mac builds. But those aren’t a thing anymore. I understand that the inability to do so with 64-bit is a compiler limitation.

And while the compilation / link step may be a current limitation of the compiler, anymore Apple notarization and code signing is pretty important to distribution. And to my knowledge that still needs to be done under macOS.

So it is unclear to me how much it will really help even if you could compile for macOS under Windows. Though I suppose one advantage may be remote debugging may be more practical.

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let’s just wait for microsoft to do the same code signing and notarization for windows,
and cross compilation is over :frowning:

It already exists, and that does not block anyone of producing a not signed yet executable. Code signing is not the problem that Xojo is suffering, but the lack of a 64bit macOS cross compiler as they have for 32 bit.

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Technically that may be true. But if the reason you want to compile for macOS is because you want to distribute for macOS, then increasingly it becomes harder to do so if you don’t code sign or notarize. And that seems to require access to macOS itself, AFAIK. (Even if in a cloud instance.)

There are no shortage of hurdles that would have to be overcome for cross-compiling to macOS from other operating systems. As has been stated here already, you’d need a means of signing and notarizing anyway, and you really shouldn’t distribute an app you can’t test on a target you advertise for.

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:white_check_mark: Check.

True, but Xojo always cross-compiled, even when signing and notarizing were introduced but x64 wasn’t enforced, and still does for Windows and Linux. And as they did not make the same move to other platforms, this excuse is not the real issue here. You could compile to all those targets at once as always, if possible, and send them to a testing team that could sign them later, after tests and release.

:negative_squared_cross_mark: Not a real cause of abandoning just this one target x-platform. Let’s just accept that it needs much more time to be done, as the Android Compiler is taking to be completed too.

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That’s not the whole story though. We had to move to LLVM to do 64-bit compiling at all unless we wanted to spend years on a new compiler. The trick is not the compiler per-se, but the linker. The LLVM project is making progress towards being able to cross compile from non-macOS to macOS, but its slow going. Once it’s finished and stable we can start investigating again.

And yes, you could theoretically compile on a Windows machine and then sign & notarize on a Mac somewhere else if you wanted to.

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As I recognized.

https://reviews.llvm.org/rG03f43b3aca3

That’s a great example. It looks very promising if you only read the initial checkin, but if you read all of the notes, you’ll see that they had to revert that change three days later because of other problems it caused.

Sure, errors were causing the automation to fail the building process, they relanded it again later after the build and fixed the bug. rG6acd3003755d

True. I should take my own device and read the whole thread.

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