[Ham-Mac] MacOS X x86 Intel Support

[Bill Coleman]

On Jun 8, 2005, at 11:17 AM, Sergei Ludanov wrote:

> Although question is for Chris, I'll jump in. With Xcode 2.1 Apple  
> introduced universal binaries, which means that it will run on both  
> PPC and Intel Macs. The stumbling block here will be for developer  
> who are still using Code Warrior for their development. They will  
> need to migrate their projects to Xcode and use gcc 4.0. Also if  
> programs are not Cocoa they may require a bunch of tweaks and  
> tuning. As an exercise I recompiled a couple of my applications to  
> Universal binaries yesterday and had no problems whatsoever. So  
> there should not be any problems maintaining versions that runs on  
> both architectures.

One very important point that cannot be overlooked:

Supporting two build architectures DOUBLES the QA burden on  
developing software.

Everything that is tested in the PPC version must be tested in the  
Intel version, and vice versa. You can't just "trust" the compilers  
get it right, because they don't always. Or things that appear to  
work in one architecture show up has horrible bugs in the other  
architecture are actually undetected bugs in the software.

Trust me, I speak from experience during the LAST processor shift  
(68k -> PPC).

One technical question -- how do they handle the endian differences  
between the PPC and Intel processors? Interpreting binary file  
records must be a real challenge. At least the 68k and PPC were both  
big-endian.

Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
             -- Wilbur Wright, 1901