Mac M1 Support

[andriy-gerasika]

Hi,
is it possible to upgrade the library to include Mac M1 support:

• JNA v5.7 has Mac M1 support
• Zulu OpenJDK (incl. JavaFX 8 on Mac M1)

[shannah]

I just gave a feeble effort to build it on my arm mac in the hope that it would just work. But no such luck. I'm getting some build errors related to JavaNativeFoundation not being available. I fished around a bit but don't have time right now.

I'll give it another try later (no ETA) when I have more time to work on it.

[andriy-gerasika]

create a sample PR solving the problem w/ JavaNativeFoundation

I have one more question:
why it is said on the front page the project requires Java 11 or higher on MacOS? I am using current version w/ Java 8 on MacOS and plan to use the upcoming version on Mac M1 using Azul/Zulu Java 8 -- is it possible not to make Java 11 a requirement in the future version and compile the JAR w/ Java 8 compatibility option on?

Thanks

[shannah]

Up until recently it supported Java 8. Some PRs came in that moved it to Java11. I didn't see any reason why not to bump to Java11. Probably wouldn't be hard to backport. I think it just uses a few convenience features of Java11. Nothing fundamental. If you want to try building for Java 8, I'm sure you could flush out the build errors relatively quickly.

[shannah]

Thank for the PR.
Build works. Tests fail on ARM (meaning build didn't really work).
https://gist.github.com/shannah/836d8e8944559cb733c12334387ff404

Don't have time to dig into details of it right now.
If you have time to dig into this, I can give you SSH access to the Arm box so you can play with it.

[andriy-gerasika]

sorry, I did not ran test on my Mac M1 -- there is indeed a problem w/ Mac M1 (not Intel though). I receive the following Java crash logs on "mvn clean install":
http://www.gerixsoft.com/tmp/hs_err_pid8603.log
http://www.gerixsoft.com/tmp/hs_err_pid8450.log
-- looks like there is a bug in JNA v5.7 on ARM or there is some problem with binding to Objective C runtime lib

[andriy-gerasika]

Hi,
I was able to find a problem -- for some reason methodSignatureForSelector on Mac M1 returns null:
http://www.gerixsoft.com/tmp/methodSignatureForSelector.png
but I am not sure why...

[shannah]

At the break point in the screenshot, what is context of that methodSignatureForSelector: call? I.e. What is the receiver/object and what is the selector?

[andriy-gerasika]

receiver is "NSObject", selector is "alloc"
http://www.gerixsoft.com/tmp/methodSignatureForSelector2.png

[shannah]

Thanks for that. Odd. I'm not sure why this should be the case. NSObject certainly supports the "alloc" selector.
I'll need to dig into it. Perhaps there is a change to how Objective-C classes work (since in this case, the receiver is a Class, and not an NSObject instance).

Has anyone had the chance to check into this a little more?

Perhaps this would be helpful?

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/addressing-architectural-differences-in-your-macos-code#Enable-Strict-Type-Enforcement-for-Dynamic-Method-Dispatching

I am not sure if it is relevant or not as this is beyond my scope of knowledge but I am willing to test any changes or help in any other way possible if necessary.

[shannah]

I just picked up an M1 mac over the weekend but haven't had a chance to set it up yet. Well look into this further once it is set up.

[dkocher]

You might be interested in this PR tackling the same issues for Rococoa.