System requirements for macOS dmg

[jenskutilek]

I downloaded the dmg for macOS just to find out that the App won't start on 10.13. I could not find this mentioned anywhere in the documentation pages. Would be nice to get an early warning ;)

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@chrissimpkins Answer: Current repository releases require macOS 10.14 and above. macOS install docs updated. Users on macOS < 10.14 can build the app bundle with the instructions in #40 (comment). Looking into a way to support earlier macOS versions in our releases.

[chrissimpkins]

Hmm. Does not launch or do you get an error? I've tested from 10.14 - current 11 versions

[jenskutilek]

Nothing happens when I try to launch the app. It doesn't have a crossed out icon like some apps that are unsupported on the current system.

... ah well, I tried to launch the app via Terminal, there I get an error message:

$ /Applications/Slice.app/Contents/MacOS/Slice
[3517] Error loading Python lib '/Applications/Slice.app/Contents/MacOS/Python': dlopen: dlopen(/Applications/Slice.app/Contents/MacOS/Python, 10): Symbol not found: ____chkstk_darwin
  Referenced from: /Applications/Slice.app/Contents/MacOS/libintl.8.dylib (which was built for Mac OS X 10.15)
  Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
 in /Applications/Slice.app/Contents/MacOS/libintl.8.dylib

[chrissimpkins]

I was just typing the following when you posted the above :)

I'm guessing that this is a PyInstaller related problem. I compile the application in 10.15.7 and it is bw compatible with 10.14. I don't have a 10.13 VM to test.

[chrissimpkins]

As I understand it, PyInstaller provides a forward compatibility guarantee, but not a backward compatibility guarantee across macOS (and other OS) versions.

You can compile the app bundle yourself in a requirements.txt defined venv with:

make build-macos

Slice/Makefile

Line 36 in 7a3f95d

build-macos: macos-iconset build-image-resource build-font-resource

Package will be located in the dist directory.

It would be ideal to move this entire process to build from GH Actions and compile with an early version of macos. My understanding is that GHA doesn't support macOS < 10.15.

Does Just's Font Goggles package build work for you on 10.13?

[chrissimpkins]

Updated macOS installation docs with the 10.14+ requirement. https://slice-gui.netlify.app/docs/install/#macos

Let me see if I can find a way to support earlier versions of macos in our releases. Sorry for the troubles Jens.

[jenskutilek]

No worries! The latest release of FontGoggles (1.1.17) works for me.

I will try to build the app myself. I already was able to use the app via the slicegui pip installation.

[chrissimpkins]

Added #41 to support earlier versions of macOS

[chrissimpkins]

Added new docs on how to build the single file PyInstaller Slice.app macOS packages from source in https://slice-gui.netlify.app/docs/developer/#compile-app-distributions-by-platform