[Bf-viewport] [Bf-committers] Mac OS 10.7+ for Blender 2.8

Sun Oct 9 21:21:25 CEST 2016

Realized something today:
Increasing Blender 2.8's system requirements to Mac OS 10.9 lets us target
OpenGL 3.3 instead of 3.2! Mac OS 10.7 & 10.8 were the only reasons to stay
at 3.2. Hardware (GPU) requirements stay exactly the same.

What does 3.3 offer over 3.2? (* = exciting, fits into our plans)
* instanced arrays
* more efficient occlusion queries
* 10_10_10_2 vertex attributes (perfect for normals)
- 10_10_10_2 textures
- sampler objects

Complete list here:
https://www.opengl.org/wiki/History_of_OpenGL#OpenGL_3.3_.282010.29

The differences between 3.2 and 3.3 are not major, but setting our minimum
to 3.3 means we can guarantee these features will be there at runtime. No
need for extension checks or fallbacks.

Let's bump OpenGL to 3.3 and GLSL to #version 330.
Unless someone objects, I'll update the development docs & tasks & code to
reflect this.

Mike Erwin
musician, naturalist, pixel pusher, hacker extraordinaire

On Sat, Oct 8, 2016 at 10:34 AM, Jens Verwiebe <info at jensverwiebe.de> wrote:
>
> Just FYI: Older macs can run 10.9/10/11 too jst with the bootloader trick.
>
> It warps 64 bit efi calls to 32bit efi in for example MacPro 1.1.
>
> I have exaclty done this on an 1.1 from 2006 running Yosemite ( 10.11 )
now.
>
> A demon assures consecutive updates do not ruin the bootloader exchange.
>
> Its very easy to use, see Mac Rumors forums.
>
> Jens
>
>
> Am 08.10.2016 um 16:02 schrieb Brecht Van Lommel:
> > Ok, let's do macOS 10.9 minimum then.
> >
> > I'm about ready to commit the libraries, if anyone likes to review see
> > here. Otherwise I'll just go ahead and commit things in the next few
> > days.
> > https://developer.blender.org/D2283
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 5, 2016 at 3:27 AM, Mike Erwin <significant.bit at gmail.com>
wrote:
> >> Ok, I've had a chance to read your points and dig up the hardware
facts.
> >>
> >> I was concerned about the people that are stuck on 10.7 because their
> >> computer can't support 10.8, and didn't want us to leave them behind
> >> without a very good reason. Other people/projects/companies abandoning
it
> >> are not good reasons. But...
> >>
> >> The only Mac than could run Blender 2.8 but not OS 10.8 is the first
Mac
> >> Pro (Aug 2006 - Jan 2008), and only with an upgraded GPU. iMacs,
MacBooks
> >> Pro, everything else of that era is stuck with an old GPU and won't be
> >> supported anyway.
> >>
> >> So now we know exactly who we'll be disappointing! Mac Pro owners
(early
> >> adopter or second-hand) that don't have a newer Mac to run Blender on.
> >> Seems like a very small segment...
> >>
> >> Any newer Mac running 10.6.8 or later can upgrade to 10.9 free of
charge.
> >> Nobody is "stuck" on 10.8 by hardware. They might choose to run 10.8 or
> >> (god forbid) 10.7 but we have no obligation to support their choice.
> >>
> >> After gathering these facts I am also in favor of making Mac OS 10.9
the
> >> new minimum.
> >>
> >> Mike Erwin
> >> musician, naturalist, pixel pusher, hacker extraordinaire
> >>
> >> On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 5:29 PM, Martijn Berger <
martijn.berger at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I think 10.6 was special in the sense that a significant number of
people
> >>> lingered on that version.
> >>> 10.9 and higher have been free upgrades and that seems to have moved a
> >>> significant number of people over.
> >>> Last time i checked our download stats 10.6 had more users then 10.7
and
> >>> 10.8 combined.
> >>>
> >>> Taking that into account I would be in favor of using 10.9 as minimal
> >>> version.
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 10:59 PM, Brecht Van Lommel <
> >>> brechtvanlommel at pandora.be> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Xcode 8 is currently showing this warning. So it's not clear how long
> >>>> Apple will even officially support building for 10.8.
> >>>>
> >>>> clang: warning: libstdc++ is deprecated; move to libc++ with a
minimum
> >>>> deployment target of OS X 10.9
> >>>>
> >>>> Apple support for 10.9 ended last month, 10.8 a year before that, so
> >>>> those are not even getting security updates anymore. Firefox and
> >>>> Chrome have 10.9 as minimum requirement, and I think the same or
> >>>> higher is required for a lot of other major software. Blender 2.8
> >>>> would be released a year or more from now, so we would be the
> >>>> exception in still supporting 10.7.
> >>>>
> >>>> The one issue I personally found with 10.7 was an SDK bug that makes
> >>>> building Python 3.5 fail. I tried to solve it for a few hours but
> >>>> didn't find a solution yet. It's probably not a showstopper but if we
> >>>> decide to use 10.8 or higher I won't spend more time trying to fix
it.
> >>>>
> >>>> I don't know of any other serious issues, though inevitably we'd
> >>>> encounter some in the future. Personally I wouldn't want to spend
time
> >>>> debugging OpenGL issues on e.g. 10.7 or 10.8, but maybe you're up for
> >>>> it :)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 2:27 PM, Mike Erwin <significant.bit at gmail.com
>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>> Bringing this back up since it was mentioned in the C++11 libs
> >>>> discussion.
> >>>>> Why are some people in favor of Mac OS 10.8 as a minimum
requirement? I
> >>>>> agree that 10.7 sucks from a usability perspective, but I'm sure you
> >>> have
> >>>>> better reasons.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> It would help the discussion to have a list of Macs that could run
> >>>> Blender
> >>>>> 2.8 (decent GPU) but can't run OS 10.8.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> -- Mike
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 2:32 PM, Mike Erwin <
significant.bit at gmail.com
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Mac OS 10.6 "Snow Leopard" needs to be dropped, since Apple
> >>> implemented
> >>>> GL
> >>>>>> 3.2 starting with OS 10.7 "Lion". The rest of the Blender 2.7x line
> >>> can
> >>>>>> still support Snow Leopard.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Now that we can assume OS 10.7 or later, what does that give us?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> OpenGL 3.2 -- of course
> >>>>>> ARC -- automatic reference counting, no more retain/release
> >>>>>> Fullscreen mode -- already implemented, so we can remove the older
> >>>> method.
> >>>>>> I see comments about this working better in 10.9 because of
improved
> >>>>>> multiple monitor handling.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> So no huge features for us besides OpenGL. But this does give us an
> >>>>>> opportunity to clean up some of the crusty old workarounds. Declare
> >>>>>> MAC_OS_X_VERSION_MIN_REQUIRED = 1070 and revisit everywhere this is
> >>>>>> checked.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I'm not sure if anyone is actively working on GHOST or other
> >>>> Mac-specific
> >>>>>> stuff, but wanted to start this conversation early.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Mike Erwin
> >>>>>> musician, naturalist, pixel pusher, hacker extraordinaire
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