The readme for Xcode 3.2.5 (PDF) says:
Using the LLVM compiler requires the 10.6 SDK
Does this mean that the LLVM compiler (not LLVM GCC) can only be used to compile applications targeted at 10.6 and up, or just that the 10.6 SDK has to be present for the LLVM compiler to work?
You can target 10.5 using the LLVM compiler in either Xcode 3.2 or 4. I have been doing this for our control software for more than half a year, and it runs just fine on the Leopard machines we've deployed on.
As with all cases where you build with one SDK and target another, you'll need to verify that you don't use any features specific to the newer OS without appropriate runtime checks and / or weak linking of certain frameworks.
Based on a quick test, I was able to build a 10.5 app with LLVM using the latest Xcode, 3.2.5, which includes the 10.6 SDK. Having checked the product, the Info.plist records the minimum OS version as 10.5 and as far as I'm aware, the original choice of compiler has no effect on the way the OS runs the end product (as you'd expect). Unfortunately I don't have a 10.5 machine to test it on.
I'd therefore imagine that Apple just mean that LLVM ships with the 10.6 SDK.
Related
Can I run a preference pane built using ARC and x86_64 (10.9 SDK) and targeted for 10.6 under 10.6 or will it only run under 10.8 or later? I keep getting "GC compatibility mismatch errors" when I try to launch it under 10.6 and 10.7
64-bit preference panes in 10.6 and 10.7 have to use garbage collection, not ARC. See this question for more.
You will have to download an older version of Xcode (5.0.2, I think) that supports Garbage Collection in order to build the 64-bit pref-panes.
Or you could build a 32-64-bit prefpane, which the older OSes will attempt to load the 32-bit one after failing to load the 64-bit one. Note that you will need to either compile it using manual retain count, or have some bridging functions to handle retain and release.
I've just discovered that my current version of the app doesn't launch on 10.6.
It used to work fine in 10.6 before. So I must have changed something in recent versions. So before I dive in and start comparing the source codes, is there a way to find out what cause the app not to launch in 10.6 but works fine in 10.7.
Details:
Xcode 4.3
LLVM compiler 3.1
Deployment target set to 10.6
Also, would Xcode warn me if I'm using a 10.7-only API in my code?
SDL uses some functions that no longer work using the MacOSX10.7 SDK. I am not very familiar with MacPorts and I would like to know if there is a way to tell macports to build SDL using the 10.6 SDK instead.
If this is not possible, I can download the source and compile it myself, but again, I am not familiar with how to set the flags that I need. I would like a 32-bit build of SDL that uses the 10.6 SDK but runs on Lion.
I have successfully built SDL framework for ppc, i386 and x86_64 using the following diff: http://r.research.att.com/sdl-1.2.14.diff
and the project in SDL-1.2.14/Xcode/SDL/SDL.xcodeproj. The diff uses 10.5 SDK so if you don't have that, you can simply change the 10.5 line to 10.6 and remove ppc.
If you don't want to build it, a binary is available at http://r.research.att.com/libs/SDL-1.2.14-fw-darwin9-bin3.tar.gz - it works on OS X 10.5 and higher (i.e., including Lion).
(I gave up to trying to fix the configure + make build which is broken for OS X since it has a lot of stuff hard-coded that is many years out of date, because I needed it quickly...)
I was developing an application using xcode 4 to target snow leopard (10.6)
Now, nearly the end of the development, I've been asked to support 10.5+.
I have set the Mac OS deployment target to 10.5 and compiled.
The compiler (LLVM 2.0) and linker seems to be happy with the change
but I came across a feature I've used from NSWindow (isOnActiveSpace) which is states as AVAILABLE_MAC_OS_X_VERSION_10_6_AND_LATER
This I understand states that it won't work (throw exception?) in 10.5 but no warning were raised when building.
I currently don't have a leopard installation and it will take our QA some time to arrange a computer for that, so in your experience, what should I do next? how can I go over the code and make sure that all the APIs I've used are in fact safe for 10.5?
Set MAC_OS_X_VERSION_MAX_ALLOWED to 1050 and see what symbols disappear. More info in TN2064.
Before you ask, yes, I have a very good reason for wanting something to run on 10.3. It's a very small in-house project that must run on a very important person's machine, which cannot be upgraded for a very good reason. =)
The 10.6 DVD doesn't seem to offer an option to install the 10.3 SDK, only 10.4+. I also can't seem to find it on Apples website.
I found this tip about how to install it on 10.5, via the Xcode optional installs, but that doesn't seem to be the case for 10.6?
http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/cocoa/201508-10-3-9-sdk-with-xcode-2-5-on-leopard.html
Is it incompatible, or just not offered because it's so old? Must I use an earlier version of Xcode? Can I just try to install it via a <10.6 DVD?
You don't need the Mac OS X 10.3 SDK to build for Mac OS X 10.3. Just install the optional Mac OS X 10.4 (Universal) SDK, then:
Set your Base SDK to the Mac OS X 10.4 (Universal) SDK
Set your Compiler Version to GCC 4.0
Set your Mac OS X Deployment Target to Mac OS X 10.3 for the PowerPC architecture (using build setting conditions)
Carefully avoid any API that isn't on Mac OS X 10.3
This should be sufficient for building a Mac OS X application that will run on Mac OS X 10.3.9, even on Snow Leopard.
The 10.3.9 version number is important; if you're using any C++ in this application, Mac OS X 10.3.9 is the first version (and the only version of 10.3) that includes the Standard C++ Library in shared library form, which is required for using GCC 4.0 or later. Otherwise you'd have to use GCC 3.3, which is neither included nor supported with Xcode 3.2 on Snow Leopard.
On the other hand, C and Objective-C code may even run on earlier releases of Mac OS X 10.3. I can't think of a reason it wouldn't, but I haven't tried it myself. Even people sticking with a 6-year-old version of Mac OS X will use the most recent version of it, right?
If the 10.3 system is running 10.3.9, you may be able to use the optional 10.4u SDK for your build on 10.6 by setting the deployment target to 10.3 and sticking to gcc-4.0, rather than gcc-4.2, the 10.6 default. The python.org installers for OS X are intended to be built that way, that is, one executable that works on 10.3.9 through 10.6 (although, at the moment, there are still a few problems with building all variants on 10.6 so 10.5 is still used). Also the python builds are primarily using Carbon frameworks rather than Cocoa and they do not use Xcode to manage the building of the product. If you can't get Xcode to do it directly, you might be able to build from the command line.
export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.3
/usr/bin/gcc-4.0 -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk -arch ppc ...
It may be that the 10.3 SDK isn’t supported on 10.6 because 10.6 is intel-only. Also, 10.3 doesn’t support intel. Remember that 10.4 was the first OS to support intel, which is why that’d be the earliest OS supported on 10.6. However, I could be wrong.