Darwin Engine for Mac OS X Intel

Stryder · Post by **Stryder** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 1:38 am

Please update the Darwin engine to be native under OS X for Intel.

FourthWorld · Post by **FourthWorld** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 11:44 am

Stryder wrote:Please update the Darwin engine to be native under OS X for Intel.

7 copies of this message posted here today. Confident you got the message across, or should we expect to see more in the coming days?

Stryder · Post by **Stryder** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 12:25 pm

No, I posted one in each of the relevant categories.

No more coming.

Yes, I am trying to get the point across, since OS X has been native Intel for well over 1 year now, and still no Darwin engine for it.

Stryder · Post by **Stryder** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 7:01 am

Still no Intel Darwin Engine.

I posted this message 5 months ago, and RunRev was already over a year behind the boat. We are now exactly 26 months from the Intel Mac announcements, and 20 months from the launch of the first Intel Macs. There are absolutely no PowerPC Macs available from Apple.

To use the Darwin Engine under Rosetta isn't an option for a *SERVER*.

What gives? To me, this is really starting to feel like HyperCard 3.0, all over again.

FourthWorld · Post by **FourthWorld** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 3:58 pm

Forgive me if I don't track down each of your copies and reply only to this one here:

Why exactly do you need Darwin specifically?

Rev runs natively on OS X, no Rosetta required. In fact, of all the high-level development tools I believe Rev was first to deliver Universal Binary.

malte · Post by **malte** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 5:27 pm

Please excuse my ignorance, but can you use the current engine as CGI? If so, how?

ATB,

Malte

Stryder · Post by **Stryder** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 4:23 am

FourthWorld wrote:Forgive me if I don't track down each of your copies and reply only to this one here:

Why exactly do you need Darwin specifically?

Rev runs natively on OS X, no Rosetta required. In fact, of all the high-level development tools I believe Rev was first to deliver Universal Binary.

Ok, that just screams ignorance, and arrogance. "Forgive me if I don't track down each of your copies...", what are you trying to say with this point? I posted this reply in this single message, I didn't reply to all of the messages AGAIN. The initial messages were to get attention. This message is for asking the question again. Ok, whatever....

Why do we need an Intel-Native Darwin engine? Why do we need Bio-Diesel when regular diesel burns just fine? Yeah, dumb question, so is that one.

If I want to develop Revolution CGIs, which use the Revolution Engine, and I want to deply those CGIs on a Mac OS X machine, I need to use the Darwin Engine, and NOT the IDE. IDE=graphical development and deployment. Engine=command-line and CGI deployment. Now, let's just say that my Macs are running OS X on Intel. What does that mean? Well, for performance, efficiency, and above all, AVOIDING POSSIBLE BUGS WITH ROSETTA, you should use an Intel-native engine.

Where does one find this Intel-native Revolution Engine for Darwin? What? Nowhere? That's right. RunRev has decided NOT to compile and make available a tool which would allow the efficient use, and spread of Runtime Revolution.

Does this make sense? Nope. Let's see, there's engines for BSD Unix, Linux of various versions, Sun, Windows, and others.

So, I guess if it doesn't matter to YOU, then you won't care. If it does matter to you, you care.

For example, going back to that Bio-Diesel point. I really could care less if Bio-Diesel is produced, sold, and used. What I care is that I can still get regular, plain jane, gasoline of 87 octane for my car. Someone else is stuck between a rock and a hard place if they purchased a motor which runs on Bio-Diesel and the producers decided to not make it anymore, but I could care less...

That's the point. A simple click when the engine is next compiled, and a simple link on a support webpage is all that is needed to plug this support hole.

Care if you want. Don't if you don't. The less you care (RunRev), the more this will alienate you.

Take care,

FourthWorld · Post by **FourthWorld** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 1:39 am

Stryder wrote:Ok, that just screams ignorance, and arrogance. "Forgive me if I don't track down each of your copies...", what are you trying to say with this point? I posted this reply in this single message, I didn't reply to all of the messages AGAIN. The initial messages were to get attention. This message is for asking the question again. Ok, whatever....

How would it be possible for anyone to know that without either looking up your other copies or the explanation you just provided here? That's one of the merely practical reasons why that sort of shotgun approach is so rarely used in online discussion, and even more rarely useful.

But now that we both understand that we're using only one thread, we can focus on the topic at hand:

If I want to develop Revolution CGIs, which use the Revolution Engine, and I want to deply those CGIs on a Mac OS X machine, I need to use the Darwin Engine, and NOT the IDE. IDE=graphical development and deployment. Engine=command-line and CGI deployment. Now, let's just say that my Macs are running OS X on Intel. What does that mean? Well, for performance, efficiency, and above all, AVOIDING POSSIBLE BUGS WITH ROSETTA, you should use an Intel-native engine.

I'm familiar with the acronym "IDE". I've helped build a few IDEs myself, and have been using Rev since before v1.0.

With Rev the IDE engine is indeed different from the runtime engine used for CGI work, but please note that there is a runtime engine for OS X available in your choice of native Intel, native PPC, or Universal Binary.

A third-party tutorial focusing on OS X CGI setup was written by Jacque Gay of HyperActive Software, available at:
<http://www.hyperactivesw.com/cgitutorial/index.html>

Given the number of people successfully using Rev as a CGI on OS X, and given that your own server is running OS X, please be patient with me but I'm still not understanding why one would need to run a CGI specifically under Darwin alone.

As you know, Darwin is merely one layer of OS X, the BSD layer. While some developers run Darwin without OS X, they're few enough in number (most folks running BSD are using generic Intel hardware, and most Mac users run OS X) that RunRev Ltd. was having a tough time justifying the expense of maintaining that specific engine for such a relatively small audience.

But I'm no BSD expert, and there may well be a good reason to work at the Darwin layer on a Mac without OS X. If there is, you're encouraged to present the business case for this to support@runrev.com so they can reevaluate this.

In the meantime, since you have OS X available on your server and Rev has an Intel-native runtime engine for OS X, you may want to check out Jacque's tutorial to see if it'll cover what you need for now.

Stryder · Post by **Stryder** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 2:34 am

Do you use OS X? It doesn't look like it.

Follow the tutorial.

Read this line:

Note to Mac OS X users: If you are using Mac OS X, you must download the "Darwin" version of Revolution, which is used exclusively for CGIs running in OS X. The Darwin engine is available from Runtime's web site:
http://www.runrev.com/downloads/engines ... gi/osx.zip.

Do you get it now? The Darwin engine is required for CGI under OS X. The lack of an Intel-native Darwin engine prevents running Revolution CGI scripts natively on an Intel Mac running OS X.

Janschenkel · Post by **Janschenkel** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 6:45 pm

Actually, the Darwin engine runs just fine, allbeit inside the Rosetta emulation layer. While I too would like to see the return of the cgi engines, and the ability to compile console applications, getting out a new Linux version is far more important in this day and age than replacing something that works with something else.

Jan Schenkel.

FourthWorld · Post by **FourthWorld** » Fri Aug 24, 2007 3:07 am

> Do you use OS X? It doesn't look like it.

While I use OS X daily for making desktop apps, I don't pay Apple prices for hardware just to run BSD. So no, I don't do CGI on a Mac; I get 162 gigabytes on Linux at Dreamhost (along with multiple redundant T3s, nightly automated backups, on-site generator, and an army of technicians watching over the box) for just $9.95/mo, so I haven't had occasion to consider more expensive options.

This situation with Rev CGI on OS X is curious for at least a couple reasons, and I appreciate your bringing this mystery to my attention.

First, no other Rev runtime has such a strange requirement. For all other OSes you just use the runtime engine provided for making apps for the target platform, or you can even use a standalone. It seemed odd to me that there was no way to simply do the same for OS X, so I ran this question past the good folks on the use-rev list and it turns out my hunch was at least partially correct.

On the use-rev list, Andre Garzia wrote:
> Its easy and it uses the darwin engine to load a simple CGI that
> passes the control to a running revolution (actually any MacOS X)
> application. The application receives an event based on old ACGI
> events popular during the times of WebStar and MacHTTP. The reply
> from the app is piped back to the browser.

The full post is here:
<http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-r ... 02404.html>

But what made this even more curious was how infrequently this issue comes up, esp. given Rev's disproportionate number of Mac users. I did a search for "Darwin" here and on the use-rev list and came up with very few hits (more than half were copies of your original message here; not a lot of other posts in either venue on this). It seems that for all of Rev's Mac customers, very few use OS X on their server; most use Linux or BSD on more open systems.

Given the apparently low number of affected people it's at least understandable why this hasn't been RunRev's highest priority, esp. in light of Vista, Intel-Mac GUI, Linux GTX, anti-aliasing, rich compositing, and a good many other frequently-requested items they've been delivering.

RunRev's support tells me the Intel Darwin build is on their radar, and a few others have already gotten RunRev's attention on this through more traditional means, the request DB:
<http://quality.runrev.com/qacenter/show_bug.cgi?id=4819>

I didn't see your votes there, but you can add up to five for a given issue.

In the meantime, it seems you have at least two options for moving your work forward without dealing with Rosetta:

- Check out Andre's post, drop him a note, and see if his solution for using the existing OS X runtime engine will cover what you need.

- Consider the many non-Apple systems for getting full Intel-native performance. There are even some hosting companies, like Dreamhost, which offer systems preconfigured for Rev with fat pipes and great support for far less than hosting yourself. This latter appears to be what most Mac users are doing, which is why the issue is so rarely brought up.

This isn't to suggest that it wouldn't be helpful to have a fresh Darwin build. Of course it would. But priorities at RunRev need to be balanced in consideration of a great many factors, and my interest in helping in this forum is to try to find solutions which are available immediately.

Hope this helps.

Stryder · Post by **Stryder** » Sat Aug 25, 2007 5:15 am

Thanks for looking into this, and replying to this forum. I understand I am an "oddity" here. It's good to hear that an Intel-native version is at least on the radar.

I do not like shared/co-hosting, etc. I prefer to host myself. I find support on various flavours of Linux to be lacklustre, at best, for various chipsets, network cards, video cards, etc. I do have several Linux boxes for serving, but I much prefer OS X over its simplicity. Let's just say I've had OS X servers run for 6+ years without reboot, re-install, etc. I can't say the same for some of my Linux servers, with various corrupt this, and other problems associated with incompatible hardware (I don't compile drivers).

I am also working an a project at home for a company I started August of 2006. I do have a Linux development laptop and server for that project, however, I just purchased a MacBook because some things in Linux just "bother me".

I eagerily await an Intel-Native Darwin Engine for Revolution. In the meantime, Rosetta it is, as stinky as that is. I do appreciate that RunRev has a higher priority than my needs as an Intel Darwin Engine user, but I would hope that sometime in the next 6 months I could see a newly updated version.

Thanks,
Cam Giesbrecht

PaoloMazza · Post by **PaoloMazza** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 3:55 pm

Dear friends,
it looks like RunRev is not releasing the engine for MACOSX before the end of the year. What can we do to support it?
Any idea?
Paolo Mazza

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 5:14 pm

Paolo,

Give all your friends a Revolution license at Christmas...?

Mark

Stryder · Post by **Stryder** » Sun May 25, 2008 5:10 pm

Still waiting...

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