doc: downgrade macOS x64 to Tier 2

[aduh95]

With Apple announcing the upcoming end of Rosetta, we might not be able to provide x64 compatible binaries during the lifetime of Node.js 27 (macOS 27 EOL are not known IIUC, but we should expect it to be supported until 2029, Node.js 27 EOL would be in April 2030). I think Tier 2 is what best applies, but happy to change it to Experimental.

node/BUILDING.md

Lines 82 to 85 in 66054cc

	* **Tier 2**: These platforms represent smaller segments of the Node.js user
	base. The Node.js Build Working Group maintains infrastructure for full test
	coverage. Test failures on tier 2 platforms will block releases.
	Infrastructure issues may delay the release of binaries for these platforms.

Refs: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/about-the-rosetta-translation-environment/

[nodejs-github-bot]

Review requested:

• @nodejs/build
• @nodejs/tsc

[ShogunPanda]

May I ask why don't directly downgrade to Experimental so we don't have to do it twice?

[sxa]

May I ask why don't directly downgrade to Experimental so we don't have to do it twice?

My personal opinion is that this should be no lower than tier 2 for now and therefore continues to be a platform that blocks releases if it doesn't work. At present we have the infrastructure capacity to leave it as tier 2 until such time as we cannot reasonably support testing on it, or V8 drops support for it.

[Renegade334]

With Apple announcing the upcoming end of Rosetta, we might not be able to provide x64 compatible binaries during the lifetime of Node.js 27

To be clear with the semver-major timing then, the intention is to drop to Tier 2 from v27.x, with the implicit proviso under the Tier 2 contract that if macOS support gets pulled during that release cycle, we stop producing release binaries?

[richardlau]

With Apple announcing the upcoming end of Rosetta, we might not be able to provide x64 compatible binaries during the lifetime of Node.js 27 (macOS 27 EOL are not known IIUC, but we should expect it to be supported until 2029, Node.js 27 EOL would be in April 2030). I think Tier 2 is what best applies, but happy to change it to Experimental.

node/BUILDING.md

Lines 82 to 85 in 66054cc

	* **Tier 2**: These platforms represent smaller segments of the Node.js user
	base. The Node.js Build Working Group maintains infrastructure for full test
	coverage. Test failures on tier 2 platforms will block releases.
	Infrastructure issues may delay the release of binaries for these platforms.

Refs: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/about-the-rosetta-translation-environment/

FWIW Rosetta 2 is due to be in macOS 27 (but not after) but the Apple developer article also states that macOS 26 is the last one with support for x64. I've opend a Build WG issue to discuss the more general quesions, but with Apple a lot of this is "our best guess" because they do not announce End-of-Life dates for macOS, nodejs/build#4317

Also I don't think we currently break the download stats down in a way that lets us work out the number of downloads of macOS x64 builds vs macOS arm64 builds -- we split by OS and we split by architecture but not combinations of the two. And for the pkg we don't know whether people are downloading those for use on arm64 or x64.

[mcollina]

LGTM, but I think this should be experimental and dropped from the release pipeline in 27, if not in 26.

Reasoning: 3 years is a long time, and I'm unsure we can guarantee hardware availability that long.

[sxa]

Also I don't think we currently break the download stats down in a way that lets us work out the number of downloads of macOS x64 builds vs macOS arm64 builds -- we split by OS and we split by architecture but not combinations of the two.

That's unfortunate - is there any way we can start to get them that way going forward since that trend will definitely be useful as we head towards 27.

And for the pkg we don't know whether people are downloading those for use on arm64 or x64.

True ... Unless we have any analytics on the web site relating to how many people change this drop down (which currently defaults to x64 - perhaps something we could switch) before selecting the package.

[richardlau]

Also I don't think we currently break the download stats down in a way that lets us work out the number of downloads of macOS x64 builds vs macOS arm64 builds -- we split by OS and we split by architecture but not combinations of the two.

That's unfortunate - is there any way we can start to get them that way going forward since that trend will definitely be useful as we head towards 27.

If you're able to decipher the metrics stuff in the Build WG repo the scrubbing of personal identifiable information and summarizing is all in there.

And for the pkg we don't know whether people are downloading those for use on arm64 or x64.

True ... Unless we have any analytics on the web site relating to how many people change this drop down (which currently defaults to x64 - perhaps something we could switch) before selecting the package.

I don't know if we have web analytics -- that'd be something to ask @nodejs/web-infra.

[aduh95]

Worth noting that Homebrew announced no x86 support was to be expected from them as of September 2027: https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers#future-macos-support
I think we rely on Homebrew to manage some of the dependencies, so we might get stuck with an outdated build chain if we don't find an alternative (even for Node.js 24, EOL is scheduled for April 2028). Maybe we should downgrade to Tier 2 for Node.js 26 already?