[OSX] No more ppc64 in hugin builds

[Harry van der Wolf]

Hi mac users,

Recently some G5 Leopard users encountered problems with my latest 32/64-bit quad-architecture builds, containing the  ppc/i386/ppc64/x86_64 architectures.

It turned out that the underlying system dependencies in the QT, GLUT and OpenGL frameworks no longer contain ppc64 code. Obviously Apple silently "dismantles" the ppc64 support, in this case as part of the QuickTime upgrade.
ppc64 is the 64bit variant for G5's, having 64bit hardware and running Leopard. SnowLeopard no longer runs on ppc64.

When googling around you see more and more questions on the web about ppc64 open source and third-part tools no longer running, due to Apple's silent actions to remove ppc64 support. Still every Apple and OSX version supports 32bit ppc.
By now I'm on Snow Leopard which means that my system is only i386/x86_64/ppc7400 anyway. The ppc7400 is still there for compatibility reasons and to support all older ppc hardware as of G4.

This means that I can no longer compile libraries and binaries that relate on system libraries/binaries/frameworks for ppc64. Not at all on Snow Leopard (10.6.x), but even Leopard (10.5.x) is loosing ppc64 support in every upgrade, patch and roll-out of new "almost system" like software like Quicktime, Safari and so on. So even if I still would have been on Leopard I could no longer build for ppc64 due to the mentioned removed ppc64 support in openGL, GLUT and QT (don't know why QT is a necessary dependency for GLUT and therefor for Hugin, but OK)

 

Conclusion:

- From now on I will (can) only build triple architecture builds e.g. i386, x86_64 and ppc. It means that all users on ppc hardware can still run Hugin but only in 32bit, as it always did, apart from the last 7 builds. It will also mean that new stable releases will no longer contain a 64bit ppc variant.

 

Consequences of 32bit hugin for ppc users (even for those on G5 who just upgraded from Tiger to Leopard to be able to use 64bit):

- 32bit is supposed to be 5-15% slower than 64bit (I only tested this for Intel but it should be the same for ppc).

- It's no longer possible to build >4GB panoramas on ppc (Did anyone do this anyway? Also: Has this ever been tested on OSX?).

 

In effect it means that the hugin-mac-2010.1.0-38ed0587798b from my website is the last 32bit/64bit build containing ppc64. And lately it's only possible to run it with a little hack[0] due to the missing ppc64 support.

 

Hoi,

Harry

 

[0]: <http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx/browse_thread/thread/1fa0861b18f0506a?pli=1>

 

[grow]

:-(
(mostly directed towards Apple.)

> In effect it means that the *hugin-mac-2010.1.0-38ed0587798b* from my

> website is the last 32bit/64bit build containing ppc64. And lately it's only
> possible to run it with a little hack[0] due to the missing ppc64 support.
>
> Hoi,
> Harry
>

> [0]: <http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx/browse_thread/thread/1fa0861...
>
>
>
>