Re: 64-bit version of Lilypond?

[Carl Sorensen]

On 2/25/19, 5:23 AM, "lilypond-devel on behalf of David Kastrup" 
<address@hidden on behalf of address@hidden> wrote:

    Karlin High <address@hidden> writes:
    
    > I'm still thinking it would be ideal if the macOS LilyPond could be
    > built as it now is. That's the least work for LilyPond build people,
    > and probably the best result for macOS users.
    
    The question was not whether this was the best way but whether it was at
    all legal.  I'd certainly want us to have a MacOSX installer that just
    falls out with as little per-version human effort as it and other
    installers do now.  If Apple says "no" to using Xcode for that purpose,
    then we cannot argue our way out of that but there may be other
    development environments that we can make use of.  That's why I
    suggested looking what is available for Darwin (I think OpenDarwin at
    some point of time closed shop but that was some time ago and I haven't
    followed developments).

I checked in with Darwin.  Currently the unofficial successor to OpenDarwin 
(which closed shop) is PureDarwin[1].  PureDarwin is working on an SDK, but has 
no time frame for providing it.

I then hopped over to a reference provided by PureDarwin that describes the 
relationship between Darwin (the command-line processor and base operating 
system of OSX) and OSX[2].  Darwin *is* open source, but the other pieces of 
OSX are not.

Based on my reading of this page and the porting instructions available at the 
developer.apple.com website, I believe we can use the open-source version of 
Darwin to create the command-line version of LilyPond.  I believe that the only 
reason we need to use the OSX SDK is to create the graphical front end 
application in lilypond.app.  Now, that is precisely what the typical Mac user 
wants to see, so it would not be particularly user-friendly to distribute 
lilypond without the graphical editor.  But I would be surprised if any 
long-term lilypond user on the Mac were using the bundled app.  The bundled app 
is just too basic for really getting work done.

So I think one possibility in providing a functional lilypond 64-bit executable 
for OSX is to only provide a command-line version, with a pointer to use it 
with Frescobaldi.  Not ideal, but perhaps better than saying "build your own".

Carl
 
    
1.     http://www.puredarwin.org/
2.https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Porting/Conceptual/PortingUnix/background/background.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40002848-TPXREF101