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Apple Silicon support for 2019 LTS?

Discussion in 'macOS' started by _Adriaan, Jun 23, 2020.

  1. _Adriaan

    _Adriaan

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    Hey wonderful Unity folks!

    Quick question: will the 2019 LTS version of Unity also support Apple Silicon? And if not, can you perhaps share some of the decision making behind things like this?
     
  2. Lars-Steenhoff

    Lars-Steenhoff

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    Probably not, but perhaps you can still do a recompile in xcode ?
     
  3. Thomas-Bousquet

    Thomas-Bousquet

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    +1ing Adriaan's question.
     
  4. jason_yak

    jason_yak

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    Same! Without this added to 2019 LTS it will mean we’re yet again forced to use tech streams for production again. We’ve not been able to ever sit on an LTS version due to critical features likes this.
     
  5. mahdi_jeddi

    mahdi_jeddi

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    I would actually say that it will probably be backported looking at the history of 64bit support for iOS. This doesn't seem to use anything special from 2020.2 and I'm guessing that right now they just want to put a version out there for developers to test. If not, then what's the point of LTS at all.
     
    Last edited: Jun 24, 2020
  6. Lars-Steenhoff

    Lars-Steenhoff

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    The point is stability and not new features, so any new features can break stabilty. Thats why I said probably not, because there is a new feature cut off point at 2019.3 and 2019.4 is only for bug fixes.

    Would love to be wrong here by the way
     
    mahdi_jeddi likes this.
  7. mahdi_jeddi

    mahdi_jeddi

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    I get that supporting ARM-based mac is gonna be a huge backend change, but this is something a lot of people who are already on LTS versions and near release need, so, like iOS 64bit support, they will be ok with stability problems as long as they can ship their game.

    This is all early days and I guess we'll know more when the dust settles down.
     
  8. bluedot99

    bluedot99

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    I am not needing the LTS support as I'll transition to 2020 anyway, but seeing how Apple is touting automated translation for binaries via Rosetta 2 (DIRT Rally and Tomb Raider were run that way) it may be that Unity does not need to do full Apple Silicon support for 2019 LTS after all and just patch Intel compilation so that it works with Rosetta 2. Apple themselves have said the transition will be 2 years for their hardware and it would be unreasonable of them to expect all software vendors to transition immediately so they mitigated this with a way for "most" software to run in some emulated form. The caveat will for sure be that it may very well not run if you rely on OpenGL, it's clear that the new architecture will be Metal only.
     
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  9. villeHelin

    villeHelin

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    The problem with Rosetta 2 is that if the same thing happens that happened with Rosetta 1, Apple will deprecate Rosetta 2 at some point in future. And at that point you really need to make a native Apple Silicon build of your app... Great if all 2019 LTS projects can be opened and they work with 2020.2, but that's goodbye for my 2017 LTS apps...
     
    mahdi_jeddi likes this.
  10. Q-Ted

    Q-Ted

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    +1
    A response regarding support for 2019 LTS would be very much appreciated.
    Kind of crazy that there is no official reply yet...
     
  11. andrews_unity

    andrews_unity

    Unity Technologies

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  12. Q-Ted

    Q-Ted

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    Thank you for your reply, but the reason this question is here, as well as in the replies of the blog post and the apple forums, is that the blog post does not explicitely answer this. If there is going to be no support for LTS versions of the editor or even if there is just build support for Silicon we would like to know.
     
    Last edited: Jul 9, 2020
  13. andrews_unity

    andrews_unity

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    As mentioned by the blog post it would 2020.2 LTS. At the moment there is no plans to backport to 2019.4 LTS, if that changes we definitely will call it out.
     
  14. Q-Ted

    Q-Ted

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    Alright thank you for the response, it really is appreciated.
     
  15. SamFZGames

    SamFZGames

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    I'd say stick with Intel Macs until you're ready to move your projects to 2020.2. The ARM transition won't happen fully for several years and it's not like you have to ditch your current Mac immediately.

    What I'm curious about is if Unity are planning to port the editor itself to ARM? Rosetta 2 apparently is pretty great but I've no doubt it will not be the optimal way of doing it and I'm sure in a few years Apple will drop that like they did 32 bit support (not before giving developers a heads up of course), for the sake of efficiency, and I'd like to know if I can keep working on Macs indefinitely or if I should try not to get too deep into Apple's ecosystem.
     
  16. thestringer

    thestringer

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    Still waiting for Hub to be updated on Apple Silicon before I can dig deep on 2020.2
     
  17. Tautvydas-Zilys

    Tautvydas-Zilys

    Unity Technologies

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    We will support native ARM64 editor eventually. However, we don't have any timelines to share.
     
    Lone1y and SamFZGames like this.
  18. ScottF

    ScottF

    Vice President, Platforms

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    Our full focus at this time is delivering a stable, publicly available version of Unity which supports Apple Silicon & Universal Apps. We specifically chose to do this work in 2020.2 where we have an opportunity to collect feedback and stabilize this effort. After support has landed and we have had a period of time to evaluate the feedback from users we will seriously consider back porting to 2019 LTS if we have confidence we can do so while preserving the stability offered by the LTS version. A complete OS architecture change is a non-trivial change with a code base like Unity and we expect there will be a period of stabilization required. We understand your ask and are working hard to be able to give concrete guidance as soon as possible.
     
  19. thestringer

    thestringer

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    What about us on the Apple Dev Kit ? Unity Hub being the blocker for me, any updates please ?
     
  20. andrews_unity

    andrews_unity

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    we hope to have an updated hub soon that works on the Apple Dev Kit.
     
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  21. Tautvydas-Zilys

    Tautvydas-Zilys

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    Heads up: now that 2020.2 shipped, we're starting to evaluate the timelines for macOS Standalone Player for Apple silicon backport to 2019.4 LTS.
     
  22. tummygames

    tummygames

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    Any potential ETA on this?
     
  23. Tautvydas-Zilys

    Tautvydas-Zilys

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    Not yet. Still working on figuring that out.
     
  24. jj-steele

    jj-steele

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    Nearly in March now, Any news?
     
    Q-Ted likes this.
  25. Tautvydas-Zilys

    Tautvydas-Zilys

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    Well, some, but not exactly great. We discovered that Apple silicon support in 2020.2 introduced this bug: https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/macos-builds-now-contain-a-quarantine-attribute

    Just last week I finally finished fixing it but the fix isn't trivial and still being validated. Until we can make sure that it is rock solid, backporting anything to 2019.4 is out of the question (in order to not introduce regressions to in a stable version of Unity). I'll post an update to this thread when we know more about when we can possibly ship it with some confidence. Any dates I give you now would be pure speculation and wouldn't be useful to anybody.
     
  26. jason_yak

    jason_yak

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    Thanks for the update. I was just wondering if you have any more info on what kind of action was needed to ensure either the quarantine flag is not imposed on an app. Do you need to embed some attributes in the app so it doesn't end up there in the first place, does it involve notarization or some kind of registration of say compiled libraries with Apple, or is there some kind of runtime action the app needs to perform in order to rid itself of flags (seems unllikely or it'd be pointless).

    I ask because the current workarounds listed are not easily self contained to each app compiled and I'm strugglingt to dig up any info on what the correct way is of dealing with this. If you have any links for further reading on the topic that would be great to know, thanks.
     
  27. Tautvydas-Zilys

    Tautvydas-Zilys

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    If the app is signed correctly, then the quarantine attribute will not prevent it from running. Hence the first workaround: codesign the app after exporting it from Unity. The fix is essentially making the editor codesign the app after the build automatically.
     
    jason_yak likes this.
  28. nickrapp

    nickrapp

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    Just wanted to share an update on backporting to 19.4. Unfortunately, due to the scale and risk of the fix Tautvydas mentioned, not to mention the overall scale of the changes necessary to support Apple silicon, we have decided not to backport Apple silicon to 19.4.

    I know this is not good news for many of you, and we are still listening to feedback, but wanted to set proper expectations for those of you that are planning to target Apple silicon.

    While we realize this does mean an upgrade we do want to remind everyone Apple silicon is in 2020 LTS which will be supported for 2 more years.
     
    Q-Ted likes this.
  29. mischa2k

    mischa2k

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    Has anyone tried Unity Editor 2018/2019/2020 LTS on Apple Silicon with Rosetta?

    I found several discussions about native support, which is great.
    But does the Unity Editor actually run stable on Rosetta today, or is this not recommended?
     
  30. ilexixeli

    ilexixeli

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    Screen Shot 2021-06-19 at 1.13.53 PM.png

    I've been using various LTS revisions (attached) on my M1 Air with Rosetta since April - all except 2017.4.29f1 have ran well, with the occasional crash. I've been using 2019.4.28 LTS for the last 3-4 days and it is definitely the most solid so far - no complaints.
     
    OnironautaNava, p0w1nd and mischa2k like this.
  31. kentacco

    kentacco

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    I'm trying to open a 2019 Unity intel version to open up https://github.com/berkeleyGamedev/3DTutorialBase but the logo doesn't appear and it doesn't seem to work. no error message, the logo on the unity app doesn't appear as you can see on the bottom. This didn't happen with the 2020 intel unity version.
     

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  32. kentacco

    kentacco

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    Also I wish I could share a link directly to the post on this thread to easily talk about it
     
  33. kentacco

    kentacco

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    when I open the project made in 2019 intel unity with 2022 silicon unity I get this error message. fingers crossed I don't explode.
     

    Attached Files:

  34. kentacco

    kentacco

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    no error message and it seemed open. yay for now! so I guess the answer to this thread is:

    You can use 2022 silicon Unity for most cases of prior version of unity made on intel as long as the project is simple

    like with my case of opening a tutorial:
    https://github.com/berkeleyGamedev/3DTutorialBase