[Mono-dev] OS X Intel support

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Wed, 2006-01-18 at 20:31 +0000, Andy Norman wrote:
> On Thu Jan 5 17:57:26 EST 2006, Jonathan Pryor wrote:
> > Mono has been ported to Intel Mac, in that the JIT will properly execute
> > under Mac OS X on an Intel box.
> >
> > As such you could install mono on an x86 mac with little trouble.
> Does that mean that the existing mono binary install that is on the mono 
> project website work on an x86 Mac or is it more complicated than that 
> to get mono installed and working on an x86 Mac ?

It's more complicated than that, as can be seen by the follow-ups by
kangaroo and Paulo Molari later in the thread.  In particular, these
responses:

http://lists.ximian.com/pipermail/mono-devel-list/2006-January/016432.html
http://lists.ximian.com/pipermail/mono-devel-list/2006-January/016536.html

The short version is that Mono's JIT works on OS X/x86, but that's about
it.  The GC hasn't been ported yet, and the JIT-generated code doesn't
currently follow the OS X/x86 ABI (which probably impacts DllImport).

So if you don't need the GC and you don't need DllImport (I assume), the
current Mono should work for you.

I doubt that you're in this position.

> I am asking as I have an existing product using mono on OS X (that 
> installs mono as part of its install) and I have no idea yet whether it 
> is going to work on the x86 Macs.

The other issue you'll see is the lack of Universal Binaries (discussed
in the same thread), which won't likely won't be resolved before the
JIT/GC issues (if it's ever important enough for someone to spend time
getting Universal builds of GLib and other Mono dependencies...).

So once Mono is properly ported to OS X/x86 (which would likely be
within 1 week of kangaroo getting access to an OS X/x86 box -- anyone
care to donate access? ;-), you'd still need to provide separate
installers/packages for PPC and intel

 - Jon