I have the honor of owning a CoreDuo MacMini, and iBook G4, and a Core2Duo MacBook Pro. All of these machines are in good health and produce very adequate performance. That said, to keep Sage current on all three machines I need OS10.4 32bit PowerPC G4, OS10.6 32bit CoreDuo, and OS10.6 64bit Core2Duo versions of Sage. Obsolete does not correspond to incapable. I would like to point out that the "least capable" of these machines the iBook G4 roughly compares in floating point performance to a Cray computer of the late 1980 variety.
On May 10, 12:32 pm, "Georg S. Weber" <georgswe...@googlemail.com> wrote: > Hi sage-devel, > > currently, there are several issues. I've got a bit spare time right > now to work on them, but can't do that alone. Help, and helpful > comments, are appreciated. > > Some technicalities: Mac OS X runs on PowerPC and Intel CPUs (iPhone > OS runs also on ARM, but that does not matter for us for the time > being), and on those CPUs either in 32bit mode or/and 64bit mode. In > principle, there is the possibility of "universal" binaries, but for > the Sage distribution, we did not achieve this yet. So in terms of > Sage binary distributions, there are four possible combinations of CPU > type and bit length, and one and the same binary distribution is built > for only one of these four combinations. But fixing the combination of > CPU type and bitlength sometimes is not enough. E.g., there are Macs > with (32bit) PowerPC G5 CPUs and Macs with (32bit) PowerPC G4 CPUs, > and Sage binary distributions built on the former won't run on the > latter. We don't have much experience with Intel CoreDuo vs. Core2Duo > vs. i5 vs. i7 yet, but fun might await us there, too. Then, there is > Mac OS X 10.4, as well as 10.5, and 10.6. Still reading this post? > Good. :-) Let me try to summarize the current state of affairs for > Sage w.r.t. these combinations, especially Sage binary distributions. > > A) Sage is supported under Mac OS X 10.4 only for 32bit-versions (not > 64-bit), on CPU architectures PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, and Intel. > (Note: 64-bit support under Mac OS X 10.4 is existent, but hardly > usable.). > > B) Sage is supported under Mac OS X 10.5 only for 32bit-versions (not > 64-bit), on CPU architectures PowerPC G5, and Intel. (Notes: OS X 10.5 > does not work on all Macs with PowerPC G4 CPUs. 64-bit support under > Mac OS X 10.5 still seems not to be satisfactory enough). > > C) Sage is supported under Mac OS X 10.6 only for 64bit-versions (not > 32-bit) and only on Intel CPUs. (Notes: OS X 10.6 does not run on > PowerPC CPUs at all, Apple simply does not support that. 64-bit is the > default bitlength for OS X 10.6. However, on certain Macs with CoreDuo > CPUs, which seem to be "32bit only", there is at least one unresolved > recent user report of building Sage currently being broken --- it > seems the Sage 4.4 MPIR spkg won't build in this 32bit/10.6 setting.) > > D) Sage binary distributions for Mac OS X are in general "upwards > compatible", but almost always not "downwards compatible". I.e. a Sage > binary distribution built on OS X 10.4 will work on OS X 10.5, one > built on a PowerPC G4 CPU will work on a PowerPC G5 CPU, a 32-bit > version will work on a 64-bit OS, but in each of these cases not the > other way around. (Note: There have been user reports in the past that > the PowerPC G4 version works on their Macs with a PowerPC G3 CPU, but > to my knowledge, that is the only case of a kind of "downwards > compatibility". AFAIK, Sage binary distributions built on a 32-bit OS > run on a 64-bit OS, but e.g. sage-clone might be broken, as well as > sage-update --- there is at least one recent user report hinting at > this, but I don't know for sure.) > > E) Currently, the Sage download page for Mac OS X binaries is divided > into "intel" and "powerpc". Under "intel", there are usually two > bdists: one for "32bit-10.4-i386", and one for "64bit-10.6-i386". > Especially, for MacIntel OS X 10.5, as of late there is no regular > genuine sage bdist (but the 10.4 one can be used under OS X 10.5 > without problems, AFAIK). Under "powerpc", there are usually also two > bdists: one for "32bit-10.4-PowerPC_G4", and one for "32bit-10.5- > PowerMacintosh" (the latter is a "G5 CPU" one, and probably should be > named "...PowerPC_G5" instead). > > F) Information on this is scattered around in certain Readme's, and > not always complete (or even correct --- e.g. with respect to OS X > 10.6 on PowerPC). > > Now the calls for votes: > > 1.) Shall we "set in stone" the above A) through D)? (This would imply > adjusting the documentation and certain Readme's, see F.) > > 2.) Having done this (or even not), shall we deliver the Mac OS X > binary distributions in one and the same directory, i.e. discard the > distinction (see E above) between "intel" and "powerpc" binary > directories? (This would imply that we should add some mechanism(s) in > the Sage binaries to detect whether they "want to" run on the > architecture/CPU/bitlength/OS version/environment they are started > on.) > > Cheers, > Georg > > --To post to this group, send an email tosage-de...@googlegroups.comto > unsubscribe from this group, send an email > tosage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > URL:http://www.sagemath.org -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
