Will the final release of Munki 5.2 be "universal"?

[Gregory Neagle]

I'm beginning to hear the question:

"Will the final release of Munki 5.2 be universal? Will it run natively on Apple Silicon Macs?"

The short answer: probably not.

I cannot figure out how to convince Xcode 12.1 to build the GUI apps as Universal2 apps. I've seen and followed this: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/building_a_universal_macos_binary and Xcode 12.1 simply does not give me the options that are described there. I have a suspicion that maybe only the current Xcode _beta_ supports Universal2 builds, but that's not documented, and I'm not particularly motivated to download and install over 10GB just to find out.

Even if the GUI apps were Universal2 apps, most of the heavy lifting Munki does is in its command-line tools, which are Python scripts. So we need a Universal2 Python. Munki's Python is a modified version of the Python 3.8.5 framework from Python.org, and they have not yet released Universal2 builds of Python. When they do, they will almost certainly be version 3.9.x, which will require a new round of extensive testing with Munki.

I do not have an Apple Silicon Mac, and my org is not likely to deploy any in the near future, so this is not a high priority for me or my organization at this time. I'm sure it will all be resolved over the next few weeks, or at worst, months. But people with the Apple Silicon Developer Transition Kit machines report that Munki 5.1.x and the Munki 5.2 betas seem to work just fine on Apple Silicon right now. There is no urgent need to have a Universal2 build. If this is important to you and you cannot wait: the code for both Munki and Python is available, and you can start experimenting with compiling to Universal2 -- no one is stopping you!

-Greg

[Gregory Neagle]

With the release of Xcode 12.2 late last week I am able to build Universal2 versions of the Munki GUI apps, but the issue with the Python framework remains. So no, the final release of Munki 5.2 will not be universal, barring some amazing developments at python.org in the next couple of days.

-Greg