Re: macOS 64-bit

[marnen]

I hope the post I'm responding to isn't too old to be useful, but:

* I'm an active user of Lilypond on Mac OS
* I'm concerned about the issues around 64-bit Mac builds
* I have some development expertise (though not on Lilypond specifically)
* I'm speaking up to make sure that Lilypond continues to be packaged for
Mac OS in a way that works well for me

So if any of that makes my thoughts useful, read on...


Werner LEMBERG wrote
>> I have been working on building a 64-bit macOS (x86_64-apple-darwin)
>> release.
> 
> Very nice!  And thanks for your very detailed e-mail.
> 
>> One option for build LilyPond for 64-bit macOS is Homebrew. Building
>> LilyPond with Homebrew has been met with partial success, but it is
>> unclear whether the ongoing work to make that method production
>> ready would be worth the effort.  My full comments about working on
>> Homebrew are at the bottom of this email.
> 
> I suggest to drop Homebrew in favour of MacPorts.  On first sight
> Homebrew is much more `shiny', certainly appealing young, dynamic
> users.  However, its decision to only support a very small set of
> features and macOS releases makes it very `apple-y' in a bad sense
> IMHO.

I think this is poor advice.  IMHO MacPorts is very hard to work with (as an
end user) compared to Homebrew, and I haven't seen anyone using MacPorts on
their Mac in well over a decade.  It seems to pop up mostly in developer
communities like this one (and that of Inkscape), but it's not popular in
the wider Mac community.

For myself, I hate MacPorts so much that if LilyPond came to require
MacPorts, I'd seriously consider switching to MuseScore *despite* the
somewhat lower engraving quality. I just don't want MacPorts anywhere near
my computer, and I hope I will not be forced to use it in order to continue
to use LilyPond on my Mac.

However, I don't think we have to force people to use it.  Read on.


>> In addition to the pull request, I have also have work sitting on a
>> branch that is not yet ready for formal review, but if anyone else
>> is interested can be seen here:
>>
>>   https://github.com/Jahrme/gub/tree/add_darwin-64
> 
> I think all of those patches can be already added to GUB.  Please
> provide one or more pull requests.

My understanding from other posts here (correct me if I'm wrong) is that a
major (legal, not technical) roadblock for doing this with GUB is the
licensing requirement that seems to require that Xcode be run on Apple
hardware, and the lack of consistent availability of Apple hardware for
builds.

If that's so, then I have a suggestion that doesn't seem to have been made
at least on this list so far.  Travis CI provides a cloud-based Mac build
environment (see https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/reference/osx/ for
specifics), and like all of Travis's services, this is available free of
charge to open-source projects. If we can get GUB or something else suitable
to run on Travis's Mac build environment (which seems likely), then our Mac
build issue should be solved, right?

If that's so and it seems interesting, I could probably put some effort into
getting a Travis Mac build environment set up (though I don't expect to have
much free time before July).  I've used Travis on many projects in the past
and I'm reasonably familiar with it.

Best,
-- 
Marnen E. Laibow-Koser
address@hidden
http://www.marnen.org




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