MacOS 32-bit support

John Ralls jralls at ceridwen.us
Sun Feb 4 18:39:51 EST 2018


I don't think that running a 64-bit VM on 32-bit hardware would perform very well, but Apple relaxed their restrictions on VM hosting somewhere around 10.10 so there's nothing stopping you from trying.

Regards,
John Ralls

> On Feb 4, 2018, at 12:28 PM, GWB <gwb at 2realms.com> wrote:
> 
> John,
> 
> Thank you for doing that in the past, and all your other work.  My
> recollection (sketchy, at best) is that you can still get the C++11
> compiler for later IBM PPC (OpenPower and ISA), but that has moved on
> quite a bit from the old G4 and G5.  And knowing Apple, my guess is
> that they quit updating their XCode for PPC a long time ago.  I do
> wonder how much time and effort Apple thinks it will save by dropping
> 32 bit, but that's a moot point.  FreeBSD and NetBSD (I think) will
> build fine on PPC as well; I will check the ports tree and see if
> gnucash is there.  If not, Debian works fine.
> 
> I wonder if VirtualBox on 32 bit Macs (an idea from the thread here)
> will run 64 bit, but if you do that, Apple's position in the past was
> that only Apple Server (with licences) can virtualise OS X, and not
> clients.  Do with that what you will.  If someone here on the list is
> able to virtualise a 64 bit guest inside a 32 bit Mac, I would be
> interested in leaning how.
> 
> Gordon
> 
> On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 5:59 PM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>> I won't be bundling Gnucash for PPC after 2.6.20, for lack of a suitable--i.e. C++11 capable--compiler. Linux runs well on PPC machines and GnuCash passes Debian's tests on their PPC buildbot, so that's the way to go if you're still running an old PPC mac.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> John Ralls
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 26, 2018, at 12:41 PM, GWB <gwb at 2realms.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I have not yet tried this yet with GnuCash on the G4 and G5 PPC Macs
>>> we still have, but it is possible to install FreeBSD 64 bit on the G5
>>> Macs, which does have some virtualisation (weird, but impressive).
>>> That would be a "corner case" scenario for what I'm guessing are a
>>> very few GnuCash users.  And, of course, GnuCash is still ported for
>>> Mac PPC (2.6.19, I think) so the question is will the PPC version only
>>> support 64 bit from 2.7 on, or will it still run on G4 machines.
>>> 
>>> I think that it's great the devs still port GnuCash for PPC.  Lots of
>>> apps quite that some time ago.
>>> 
>>> Gordon
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 1:08 PM, Adrien Monteleone
>>> <adrien.monteleone at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Yes, with a performance hit, it is possible, at least with Virtualbox to install a 64-bit OS on a 32-bit host. Mileage varies based on the host and guest. I’ve pulled it off a few times. I don’t know however if you can run apps that require 64-bit in such a guest without issue.
>>>> 
>>>> As for the other way around, I’ve never had an issue, but then I also didn’t have the situation of the host not supporting 32-bit apps either. It’s worth a shot I suppose to see if older but still functional hardware can be extended on life support a bit longer.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Adrien
>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 26, 2018, at 6:46 AM, Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> At Thu, 25 Jan 2018 23:52:00 -0600 Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thanks for the heads-up. (I still have a Snow Leopard Macbook, but don’t
>>>>>> use it for GnuCash any longer)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Any reason to think a 32-bit vm to run 2.6.x if needed on 10.14 or a 64-bit
>>>>>> vm to run 2.7/3.0 on older Macs wouldn’t handle those hopefully few cases?
>>>>>> (other than maybe a performance hit that is)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Is it possible to run a 64-bit VM on 32-bit hardware?  I suspect not.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Note: with Linux/KVM (don't know about other VM systems), you don't actually
>>>>> get a "32-bit" VM -- all VMs are 64-bit, just like the host -- you just
>>>>> install a 32-bit O/S on the 64-bit machine.  A 32-bit OS installed on a 64-bit
>>>>> machine (VM or bare metal) behaves like it was installed on a i686 w/PAE.  At
>>>>> least that is the case of Linux.  I have no clue what MacOSX will do if you
>>>>> try to install a 32-bit incarnation on 64-bit hardware (unless it is a really
>>>>> old version of MacOSX).  I guess you could always install a 32-bit version of
>>>>> Linux (not really sure why -- even though RH dropped 32-bit *kernels* from
>>>>> CentOS 7, 32-bit applications can still be run on CentOS 7 -- I would guess
>>>>> the same would be true of Ubuntu if/when they stops being 32-bit kernels for
>>>>> Ubuntu).
>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>> Adrien
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Jan 25, 2018, at 11:11 PM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On the off chance that anyone else is running a Mac with Developer Beta MacOS installed, the latest developer beta will put up the attached dialog when you launch Gnucash 2.6.x. What it means is that MacOS 10.14 (they’ll announce the name at WWDC in June) won’t support 32-bit applications.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> GnuCash.app 2.7.x is 64-bit and won’t have a problem. That also means that it won’t work for the (one hopes very few) users who still have 32-bit Macs. It actually won’t support anything older than MacOS X 10.9 (Mavericks) which will shut out a few of the early 64-bit Macs as well.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>>> John Ralls
>>>>>>> 
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>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
>>>>> Deepwoods Software        -- Custom Software Services
>>>>> http://www.deepsoft.com/  -- Linux Administration Services
>>>>> heller at deepsoft.com       -- Webhosting Services
>>>> 
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