Re: plugin won't load under osx 10.2.8
Re: plugin won't load under osx 10.2.8
- Subject: Re: plugin won't load under osx 10.2.8
- From: "Shawn Erickson" <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:22:17 -0800
On 2/28/07, Dave Dyer <email@hidden> wrote:
>>
>>I fail to see how Apple dropped the ball on anything....
In this case, binary compatability is being sacrificed by default,
just by upgrading the development environment, without actually
using any bleeding edge features.
From the release notes...
"Supported configurations
Xcode 2.4.1 will run on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) on a Macintosh with
either a PowerPC or an Intel processor. It will not install or run on
earlier versions of Mac OS X. Xcode supports development for Mac OS X
10.1, Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), or Mac OS X
10.4 (Tiger) (both PowerPC and Intel) using the Mac OS X SDK support."
..ah what is this Mac OS X SDK support thingy? A quick search for
information on Mac OS X SDK in Xcode's help window gets you to the
Cross-Development Programming Guide which lists the limits of
cross-development.
Here's what they could have done differently (in order of preference)
Add a "support quad doubles" switch to xcode, default to off,
and do the necessary steps to keep binaries compatible.
..multiplied by X number of other related issues that you didn't hit
in your specific case.
Treat is as a bugfix, and update libsystem.B.dylib under 10.2.8
to include the missing functions.
..multiplied by Y number of other APIs that you didn't hit in your
specific case and all the code they may depend on.
Remaining backward compatible is an issue because there
is no free upgrade path from 10.2.8 to 10.4. Forego the
revenue, which must be relatively trivial anyway.
...which is what the cross development system allows for while
allowing Apple to advance Mac OS X as needed.
The reality is development is a complex thing and Apple has done a
reasonably good job of making it easy to do [1] ... maybe to easy in
some areas because folks get to comfortable that the tools can do it
all for you. To save yourself time make sure to read any and all
documentation you can about the developer tools you use and don't
update tools until you understand the implications more fully.
Also do your best to test on all version of Mac OS X that you plan on
supporting (a limited beta/early release can help with this if you
don't have systems that can run say 10.2.8).
Anyway if you find documentation lacking make sure to let Apple know
(they provide a nice little feedback box at the bottom of most doc
pages).
-Shawn
[1] just think about it... you can build a single binary image that
can work on 10.2.8 and later while also working on a totally different
architecture that didn't even exist at the time of 10.2.8... all by
only setting a few documented settings and then Xcode does the rest.
(of course bugs / edge cases may exist but in general it just works)
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