disappointed that v 7 for mac doesn't support monterey - Page 2

meeera · 11-26-2023, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by asllearner

I wasn't trying to imply YOU were throwing us under the bus (you've never done before), merely that the confluence of events is doing so..

Again, which Intel Mac do you have? The latest Calibre runs fine on Ventura. Sonoma is not required.

KevinH · 11-26-2023, 11:47 AM

FYI.

All of both Qt 6.5.x and Qt 6.6 can be easily built to target macOS 11 even with the latest XCode tools as the deployment target. I do this for Sigil.

I know of no software that requires macOS 12 as a min target (yet) but I am sure a future QtWebEngine will require it in the Qt 6.X series, just not Qt 6.5.3 or Qt 6.6.1.

Perhaps this is something required for notarization?

That said, only the most recent 3 versions of macOS get security fixes from Apple (in general) so upgrading to the latest version of macOS your machine supports is always a good idea (after the first fixes are released of course). Just for security alone. So just update if you can whether you want the new features or not, the security fixes make that paramount in this day and age.

With a properly set up machine with older XCode you can still build software back to macOS 10.9 timeframe but security-wise it is not worth it.

When my 10 year old iMac could no longer update, I was easily able to completely remove macOS and replace it with Manjaro KDE version and still keep the machine secure and running for another 5 years.

My 2 cents ...

kovidgoyal · 11-27-2023, 04:49 AM

I have no doubt it *could* be done, my issue is that I then need to maintain older versions of macOS specifically to test everything on, and in calibre's case everything is a *lot* larger than for Sigil, and given I dont use macOS this just becomes too much of a headache.

Just one example of the crazy incompatibilities one has to worry about. At some point Apple started linking IOkit or whatever their USB driver framework is against libxml2. calibre also uses libxml2. Depending on what order extensions are loaded in the libxml2 that calibre ended up with could come from the OS or from the bundled version. On some version of macOS the system libxml2 was too old and caused crashes. To debug this I had to install the problematic macOS version in a VM which takes forever and is not always possible because Apple doesnt want you running its software in VMs on anything other than macOS and I refuse to work on a macOS machine.

There tend to be many such issue son macOS because Apple does not value backwards compatibility. That makes it too much effort for me to paper over.

I will say though that Apples default reporting of stack traces on crashes is a big help.

11-26-2023, 11:47 AM	#17
KevinH Sigil Developer Posts: 8,760 Karma: 5706256 Join Date: Nov 2009 Device: many	FYI. All of both Qt 6.5.x and Qt 6.6 can be easily built to target macOS 11 even with the latest XCode tools as the deployment target. I do this for Sigil. I know of no software that requires macOS 12 as a min target (yet) but I am sure a future QtWebEngine will require it in the Qt 6.X series, just not Qt 6.5.3 or Qt 6.6.1. Perhaps this is something required for notarization? That said, only the most recent 3 versions of macOS get security fixes from Apple (in general) so upgrading to the latest version of macOS your machine supports is always a good idea (after the first fixes are released of course). Just for security alone. So just update if you can whether you want the new features or not, the security fixes make that paramount in this day and age. With a properly set up machine with older XCode you can still build software back to macOS 10.9 timeframe but security-wise it is not worth it. When my 10 year old iMac could no longer update, I was easily able to completely remove macOS and replace it with Manjaro KDE version and still keep the machine secure and running for another 5 years. My 2 cents ... Last edited by KevinH; 11-26-2023 at 11:58 AM.

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11-27-2023, 04:49 AM	#18
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,345 Karma: 27182818 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	I have no doubt it could be done, my issue is that I then need to maintain older versions of macOS specifically to test everything on, and in calibre's case everything is a lot larger than for Sigil, and given I dont use macOS this just becomes too much of a headache. Just one example of the crazy incompatibilities one has to worry about. At some point Apple started linking IOkit or whatever their USB driver framework is against libxml2. calibre also uses libxml2. Depending on what order extensions are loaded in the libxml2 that calibre ended up with could come from the OS or from the bundled version. On some version of macOS the system libxml2 was too old and caused crashes. To debug this I had to install the problematic macOS version in a VM which takes forever and is not always possible because Apple doesnt want you running its software in VMs on anything other than macOS and I refuse to work on a macOS machine. There tend to be many such issue son macOS because Apple does not value backwards compatibility. That makes it too much effort for me to paper over. I will say though that Apples default reporting of stack traces on crashes is a big help.

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