Mac OS X support

[profwillie]

Does /psi work well on Mac OS X? What are the limitations?

[AshleyF]

The core runtime, along with ROS bridge and (Python) interop is .NET Standard, and so is supported on MacOS X as well as Linux and Windows. The major areas of componentry (e.g. imaging, media, speech, ...) also have cross-plat assemblies at least for standard message types, but then each have platform-specific components (. Sadly, MacOS lags behind here. We've tried to be consistent in the naming of projects with .Windows or .Linux suffixes when things are platform-specific. Projects with no such suffix are cross-plat and should work on Mac.

For example, Microsoft.Psi.Imaging contains the base Image/EncodedImage, PixelFormat, ImagePool and other types, while Microsoft.Psi.Imaging.Linux/.Windows contains encoders for specific platforms. Notice, a MacOS-specific implementation is missing. That's the main limitation of \psi on Mac; gaps in component-level implementations. We welcome contributions here!

FWIW, my personal arrangement is VS Code on a MacBook for development. I run PsiStudio (which is Windows-only) in Parallels which works great. A lot of my work happens to be from recorded stores (gathered from deployed Linux/Windows systems) and so, not having source/sensor components for the Mac itself hasn't been much of an issue. Totally depends on your scenario.

Hope this helps!

[profwillie]

This helped a lot. Similar to your setup, we are using a Windows system to record data from sensors to a data store. Then on Macs, we can replay the data just fine.

One thing that took me a little while to figure out was the right types of projects to have in my solution. Here is what I ended up with:

• .Net Framework project that contains the Windows-specific code and can reference the .Net Standard projects
• Many .Net Standard projects for the different components that are platform independent
• 1 .Net Core Console project used to test the .Net Standard projects.

Is this a reasonable setup?

[AshleyF]

That sounds like a totally reasonable setup; very similar to what we do. Glad it’s working for you!