Mac Apple Silicon JQt build.

[Thomas McGuire]

The guidelines I have come across on the JSoftware website indicate that you may have to build a local copy of JQt in order to run it natively on Apple silicon. I never came across this problem until I bricked my M2 machine with Diet Coke and had it repaired and am starting fresh. My original macbook transitioned from an Intel machine so I had Rosetta running and never had this issue before. 

So after setting up my fresh M2 mac with the latest Qt libraries from homebrew. Claude code had to do some significant patching of the libraries to get it all to run properly. I am just wondering if I was just missing some steps or the documentation is out of date. Builds don't usually need this much massaging when I've done them in the past, though this is my first time building the JQt stuff. 

One other note, it's minor, Apple doesn't seem to like "sprintf" and has deprecated it in the latest XCode tools. They want everyone to use "snprintf" instead. 

I have a fork at: https://github.com/tmcguirefl/qtide with the changes for "snprintf" and a summary of what claude code did to get the JQt up and running called: README-macos.md if there is someone who is a regular maintainer of the code. 

This was all done with the latest J9.8.2 interpreter

Tom McGuire

[bill lam]

Jqt and qtlib binary from Jsoftware are universal binary, it should work for both intel and apple silicon.

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[Marcin Żołek]

Sorry if I misunderstood what you are trying to do. If your goal is
simply to install the full J9.7 or J9.8-beta on macOS, you only need to
copy one command and run it in the Terminal, as described here:

J9.7: https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/System/Installation/J9.7/Unix
J9.8-beta:
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/System/Installation/J9.8/Unix

After that, Jqt should be ready to run right away with no extra steps
needed.

Does the approach described in the links above not work for you? Could
you please send the link to the J Wiki page that suggests doing all
those manual steps?

Marcin

W dniu 2026-05-11 10:39, Thomas McGuire napisał(a):
> The guidelines I have come across on the JSoftware website indicate
> that you may have to build a local copy of JQt in order to run it
> natively on Apple silicon. I never came across this problem until I
> bricked my M2 machine with Diet Coke and had it repaired and am
> starting fresh. My original macbook transitioned from an Intel machine
> so I had Rosetta running and never had this issue before.
>
> So after setting up my fresh M2 mac with the latest Qt libraries from
> homebrew. Claude code had to do some significant patching of the
> libraries to get it all to run properly. I am just wondering if I was
> just missing some steps or the documentation is out of date. Builds
> don't usually need this much massaging when I've done them in the
> past, though this is my first time building the JQt stuff.
>
> One other note, it's minor, Apple doesn't seem to like "sprintf" and
> has deprecated it in the latest XCode tools. They want everyone to use
> "snprintf" instead.
>
> I have a fork at: https://github.com/tmcguirefl/qtide with the changes
> for "snprintf" and a summary of what claude code did to get the JQt up

> and running called: README-macos.md [1] if there is someone who is a

> regular maintainer of the code.
>
> This was all done with the latest J9.8.2 interpreter
>
> Tom McGuire
>

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
> send an email to forum+un...@jsoftware.com.
>
>

> Links:
> ------
> [1] https://github.com/tmcguirefl/qtide/blob/master/README-macos.md

[Thomas McGuire]

To Bill and Marcin,

I thought it was strange I was having this problem because I thought we were using universal binaries but it was a fresh install on essentially a new Mac. I went down a rabbit hole. I think what sent me down this path was the shortcuts. That's how I usually run Jqt. So I did a local install and tested j9.8 on my mac from the ~/j9.8 directory and it runs fine (running ./bin/jqt I get the appropriate window and it seems to work). When I add shortcuts to the desktop that's where the dialog box message comes up that I need Rosetta. 

so after: 

tmcguire@Mac j9.8 % ./bin/jconsole

      shortcut_jpacman_ '' [ load 'pacman'

   exit''

The icons appear on my desktop but clicking on them brings up a dialog box that says I need Rosetta to run them. I just assumed that somehow the jqt command was the issue without testing. 

So my problem is the shortcuts and not Jqt itself. Minor issue but I do like to have the J icon in my Dock to just click on it when I need it. 

For Marcin here is the page that led me to believe I needed to build my own jqt binary: https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Guides/Compiling_Jqt/macOS

Tom McGuire

[bill lam]

The shortcut on desktop should call ~/bin/jqt.command
What if you execute the jqt.command inside terminal?
the content of the jqt.command is as below.
what is the result of the following command for your apple M2 machine?
sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brand_string

#!/bin/sh
cd "`dirname "$0"`/.."
export QT_PLUGIN_PATH="$(pwd)"/Qt/plugins
arch_name="$(sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brand_string)"

if [[ "${arch_name}" = *Apple* ]]; then
arch -arm64 bin/jqt "$@"
else
bin/jqt "$@"
fi

[Thomas McGuire]

So for some reason the shortcuts come up with "Open using Rosetta" check box check. I manually unchecked this after setting up the shortcuts and everything started working as usual. Thanks for setting me straight on this. Not sure where this is getting set. The Info.plist didn't seem to have anything like that in the bundles for the shortcuts. 

Tom McGuire

[bill lam]

What is value of JVERSION ?

I am curious it runs in arm64 or x86_64 mode.

[bill lam]

Does Apple M2 have rosetta ?
Can you try run on J bin folder the following command?
arch -x86_64 ./jconsole