Homebrew and Apple Silicone (M1)

[rafo]

Nice Project!

I finished a Homebrew Cask for Betterbird but didn't push it to the Homebrew repo since there is no Apple Silicone version of BB. Are there any plans or options for a M1 build?

[Betterbird]

Not really, unless someone funds it. We're doing the Intel build on a loaned Mac book which can disappear any minute. That was initially termed "experimental", and it's not notarised either. Apparently you can get Mac M1 in the cloud. https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/mac/.

[rafo]

Thanx for the quick reply. It would be a shame if this project for the Apple and Homebrew community failed because of this. Maybe I could help or compile it myself?  

[Betterbird]

What help did you have in mind? At a guess, we should compile the binaries we distribute yourselves. You have an M1/2 machine? Did you compile there successfully?

[rafo]

I could compile it myself on a M1, but didn't try it right now. I skimmed through your build.sh and https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/setup/macos_build.html, and it didn't seem too complicated, but maybe that's just naïve.

[seanbperiod]

With no updates for 7+ months - just wondering if anyone has been able to successfully build a version with native Apple Silicon support? (if so, could you post a link? 😅)

[Betterbird]

We don't have the hardware, and BTW, the Intel Mac we use to compile is only on loan and can be withdrawn any day. Other than that, compiling shouldn't be a problem. It could even be done in the cloud via AWS:
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/mac/
If we read the linked pricing page https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/dedicated-hosts/pricing/ correctly, a Mac2 service is necessary (Mac1 being Intel based). As a dedicated host that costs $0.716 per hour with a 24 hour minimum, so $17 per build. Getting a beefy Linux machine in the cloud for an hour is around 50 Eurocent in comparison.

Last we checked, only 2% of users were on Mac, unclear how many of those were on M1/M2.

[rafo]

Last we checked, only 2% of users were on Mac, unclear how many of those were on M1/M2.

This is sometimes a chicken-and-egg problem. 🐔 But I understand your point of view.

[Betterbird]

We will use GitHub actions soon (#173). According to
#173 (comment)
this will be supported from Q3 2023.

[Arecsu]

Seems like Github Actions can be used with m1 runners now

https://github.blog/2023-10-02-introducing-the-new-apple-silicon-powered-m1-macos-larger-runner-for-github-actions/

[Betterbird]

Thanks for letting us know. Sadly, building on Mac only works for the "full build from repo", not the "reduced build from source tarball" which we prefer, see Issue #175.

Upstream report here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1847288#c1

They did answer here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1847288#c2
Thanks for the info. Maby you can try disabling sccache on mac?

@sagudev could you look into it again?

[wrapper]

Just here to throw my hat in, would love to see apple silicon builds

[Betterbird]

Sure, see the comment before yours.

[shaul-pollak]

So I tried compiling on an M2 mac. In mozconfig-Mac I changed/added:
ac_add_options --target=aarch64-apple-darwin #changed
ac_add_options --host=aarch64-apple-darwin #added, not sure this is needed

Building fails with:
0:06.81 DEBUG: Executing: /Users/<>/.mozbuild/sccache/sccache /usr/bin/clang -isysroot /Users/<>/.mozbuild/MacOSX13.3.sdk -mmacosx-version-min=11.0 -std=gnu99 --target=arm64-apple-darwin -Wl,--version
0:06.81 ERROR: Failed to find an adequate linker

Any idea what can be done? ld does not support --version on mac

[sagudev]

We got same thing in mozjs, one solution is to set default linker to lld-classic or to clang's lld or apply this patch: https://github.com/servo/mozjs/blob/main/mozjs-sys/etc/patches/0029-fix-ld64-detection.patch

[shaul-pollak]

changed to clangd's lld. works. Thanks @sagudev

[Betterbird]

We got same thing in mozjs, one solution is to set default linker to lld-classic or to clang's lld or apply this patch:

Has that been reported upstream at Mozilla. They build FF/TB for M1/M2, so why don't they have the issue? Or are they doing only cross-compiles for Mac on Linux?

[sagudev]

Mozilla is using their own toolchains (clang) using mach. I planned to upstream https://github.com/servo/mozjs/blob/main/mozjs-sys/etc/patches/0029-fix-ld64-detection.patch but I forgot. I will open bug and fix later today.

[sagudev]

Found relevant bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1871153

[Betterbird]

Thanks. Maybe we should just add the patch to the project, I guess it won't break the other builds 😉