4 ms·

Is backwards compat a thing on osx? The kernel ABI is not stable, I don't know how often their libc equivalent changes. Glibc doesn't make much sense in that en

Is backwards compat a thing on osx? The kernel ABI is not stable, I don't know how often their libc equivalent changes. Glibc doesn't make much sense in that environment. My guess would be that your hope is doomed by the platform whatever GNUstep does.

koito17 4y ago
> Is backwards compat a thing on osx? It really depends. I managed to get a universal intel 32/64-bit app compiled on OS X 10.5 run on Catalina, which is 10.15. But it was a very unremarkable app. Just a simple NSWindow and label. Nonetheless demonstrates you can technically have some backwards compatibility. At one point in time (say 2004), you would've been able to launch Classic environment on a PowerMac G5 and emulate 68k software in Classic, all the while enjoying OS X software natively. That should span some decades worth of Macintosh software, but of course this era is simply gone now.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Last time I played with getting a moderately complex old (Jaguar/Panther/Tiger era) Obj-C/Cocoa OS X app building on modern macOS, fixing the build-stopper errors didn't take too long but there was a mountain of deprecation warnings, despite everything seemingly working as expected. That was a few years ago though so I wouldn't be surprised if some of those deprecations have turned to errors in the meantime.
fredoralive 4y ago
To an extent, they've removed things like Carbon (the Classic Mac OS descended API) and 32 bit support in general, but they don't go out of their way to gratuitously break the Cocoa API or libc. But they aren't Microsoft with the whole "Win32 must never break compatibility" mantra, so randomly stuff kinda breaks between versions more though neglect than intention?
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Microsoft has long forgotten that mantra. See .NET Core migration, Windows Runtime tooling, Xamarin/MAUI, UWP/WinUI 3.0,... The folks that were responsible for that kind of backwards compatibility apparently are no longer there, replaced by younger blood without any knowledge of Windows development history. Nowadays we even get CLI stuff instead of nice VS wizards.
  - badsectoracula 4y ago
    Well, regardless of the newer stuff, at least they still stick with the "must never break Win32 compatibility".
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      See UDK 1.0 versus 2.0. The first version used COM, while the second uses plain C API.
  - guessbest 4y ago
    Windows has a Compatibility Mode with is unmatched by any Operating System maker. I've got Windows 10 running Visual FoxPro 3.0 from 1995 and Visual Basic 5. Try that on macOS or any linux system with any application with a GUI from source or binaries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibility_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibility_mode
    - anthk 4y ago
      You mean running Mosaic from 1995 with libc5? Done. OSS Audio? OSSPD, AOSS>
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Indeed, pity that the newer generations of Microsoft employees don't seem to care as much as their predecessors used to. I doubt this will be something still going forward, now that Azure OS is what mostly matters, as proven by anything post Windows 8. Try to run anything from Windows Runtime tooling introduced alongside Windows 8 on latest Windows 11. Or better yet, Windows Phone 7.
badsectoracula 4y ago
I was referring to using GNUstep as a framework/toolkit for Linux, not macOS and the reason i asked that was exactly because macOS has issues with backwards compatibility and GNUstep has the goal of copying Cocoa - my question was, "to what extent?" Linux is backwards compatible going back decades and glibc also largely maintains backwards compatibility as long as you are not using hidden APIs - and realistically if you stick with the common C stuff you should be fine in most systems (AFAIK outside of Linux, most Unix systems treat the C library as their "stable" API).
thewebcount 4y ago
Backwards compatibility on macOS is quite good. Whenever Apple breaks compatibility, they give a lot of notice, mark the functions in the headers as deprecated, then wait a fair amount of time before actually removing them. For apps that are continuously maintained, it’s not too huge of a burden to keep up with most of the time. For apps that are no longer in development, it can suck, for sure, to not be able to use an app after a breaking change, though.
WillAdams 4y ago
>Is backwards compat a thing on osx? There was a time when it was --- there was a "Missile Command" game written for the 128K Mac which still ran fine in the Mac OS environment running the last version of MacOS on PowerPC machines: http://www.mrob.com/pub/comp/missile20.html http://www.mrob.com/pub/comp/missile20.html and the previous version of Rosetta was for running PowerPC apps on Intel machines (and before that it was for handwriting recognition). and I've always regretted that Macromedia Freehand didn't get re-written so as to run for longer --- that's one of the reasons I've pretty much switched to a Windows machine (using a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, which replaced a Book 12, which replaced a Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10, which replaced an Asus Vivotab Note 8, which replaced a Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110, which replaced an ST-2300, &c.) I use a Wacom One w/ my MacBook, but it's just not the same.

koito17 4y ago

> Is backwards compat a thing on osx? It really depends. I managed to get a universal intel 32/64-bit app compiled on OS X 10.5 run on Catalina, which is 10.15. But it was a very unremarkable app. Just a simple NSWindow and label. Nonetheless demonstrates you can technically have some backwards compatibility. At one point in time (say 2004), you would've been able to launch Classic environment on a PowerMac G5 and emulate 68k software in Classic, all the while enjoying OS X software natively. That should span some decades worth of Macintosh software, but of course this era is simply gone now.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
Last time I played with getting a moderately complex old (Jaguar/Panther/Tiger era) Obj-C/Cocoa OS X app building on modern macOS, fixing the build-stopper errors didn't take too long but there was a mountain of deprecation warnings, despite everything seemingly working as expected. That was a few years ago though so I wouldn't be surprised if some of those deprecations have turned to errors in the meantime.

fredoralive 4y ago

To an extent, they've removed things like Carbon (the Classic Mac OS descended API) and 32 bit support in general, but they don't go out of their way to gratuitously break the Cocoa API or libc. But they aren't Microsoft with the whole "Win32 must never break compatibility" mantra, so randomly stuff kinda breaks between versions more though neglect than intention?

pjmlp 4y ago
Microsoft has long forgotten that mantra. See .NET Core migration, Windows Runtime tooling, Xamarin/MAUI, UWP/WinUI 3.0,... The folks that were responsible for that kind of backwards compatibility apparently are no longer there, replaced by younger blood without any knowledge of Windows development history. Nowadays we even get CLI stuff instead of nice VS wizards.
- badsectoracula 4y ago
  Well, regardless of the newer stuff, at least they still stick with the "must never break Win32 compatibility".
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    See UDK 1.0 versus 2.0. The first version used COM, while the second uses plain C API.
- guessbest 4y ago
  Windows has a Compatibility Mode with is unmatched by any Operating System maker. I've got Windows 10 running Visual FoxPro 3.0 from 1995 and Visual Basic 5. Try that on macOS or any linux system with any application with a GUI from source or binaries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibility_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibility_mode
  - anthk 4y ago
    You mean running Mosaic from 1995 with libc5? Done. OSS Audio? OSSPD, AOSS>
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Indeed, pity that the newer generations of Microsoft employees don't seem to care as much as their predecessors used to. I doubt this will be something still going forward, now that Azure OS is what mostly matters, as proven by anything post Windows 8. Try to run anything from Windows Runtime tooling introduced alongside Windows 8 on latest Windows 11. Or better yet, Windows Phone 7.

badsectoracula 4y ago

I was referring to using GNUstep as a framework/toolkit for Linux, not macOS and the reason i asked that was exactly because macOS has issues with backwards compatibility and GNUstep has the goal of copying Cocoa - my question was, "to what extent?" Linux is backwards compatible going back decades and glibc also largely maintains backwards compatibility as long as you are not using hidden APIs - and realistically if you stick with the common C stuff you should be fine in most systems (AFAIK outside of Linux, most Unix systems treat the C library as their "stable" API).

thewebcount 4y ago

Backwards compatibility on macOS is quite good. Whenever Apple breaks compatibility, they give a lot of notice, mark the functions in the headers as deprecated, then wait a fair amount of time before actually removing them. For apps that are continuously maintained, it’s not too huge of a burden to keep up with most of the time. For apps that are no longer in development, it can suck, for sure, to not be able to use an app after a breaking change, though.

WillAdams 4y ago

>Is backwards compat a thing on osx? There was a time when it was --- there was a "Missile Command" game written for the 128K Mac which still ran fine in the Mac OS environment running the last version of MacOS on PowerPC machines: http://www.mrob.com/pub/comp/missile20.html http://www.mrob.com/pub/comp/missile20.html and the previous version of Rosetta was for running PowerPC apps on Intel machines (and before that it was for handwriting recognition). and I've always regretted that Macromedia Freehand didn't get re-written so as to run for longer --- that's one of the reasons I've pretty much switched to a Windows machine (using a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, which replaced a Book 12, which replaced a Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10, which replaced an Asus Vivotab Note 8, which replaced a Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110, which replaced an ST-2300, &c.) I use a Wacom One w/ my MacBook, but it's just not the same.