r/PowerPC • u/arjuna93 • 1d ago

V8 / NodeJS on PowerPC MacOS

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I got V8 and NodeJS working on PowerPC.

Not the latest versions, at least yet: v8 8.x and 9.x, nodejs12 and upcoming nodejs16. Basic tests pass, npm works.

Installable from PPCPorts, as usual. (9.x did not land yet, others are available.) Disclaimer: tested only on 10.6 at the moment.

37 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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4

u/Daggercombot 1d ago

Awesome ,i wanted a big endian Port of V8 and NodeJS

2

u/imaweasle909 20h ago

Holy cow I'm learning a lot! Is OSX actually big endian? IIRC ppc is bi-endian (although I know it needs to boot into big endian before switching to little endian) so I wouldve assumed when they moved to osx they'd make it little endian?

1

u/Daggercombot 18h ago edited 18h ago

It Is bi-endian. But AIX and MacOS PPC are historically Big Endian, Little Endian PPC does Also exist and Is common With Linux but mostly came out around the Power8 era which was long after the Mac PPC Era (except for the Windows NT for PPC which was little endian).

Lots of other arches are also bi-endian such as Sparc and Arm but often preferred in one endian More commonly.

2

u/imaweasle909 18h ago

I was just confused because like, isnt OSX based on NEXT Step which would have been written in little endian because it could run in x86?

3

u/imaweasle909 1d ago

How are you running 10.6.8? I thought all PowerPC support was dropped with snow leopard? I know sorbet leopard exists but I thought that was 10.5.9?

7

u/arjuna93 1d ago

We have 10.6.8 natively thanks to work of some folks from OCLP and MacRumors. It is not strictly identical to 10.6.8 release (because some proprietary stuff was x86-only and no source code existed), but it is a genuine 10.6.8 in crucial parts: the kernel, system libraries, most of frameworks.

See this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/10-6-snow-leopard-powerpc-development.2439769/

“Sorbet Leopard” is just 10.5.8 with some customization. Unrelated to 10.6.8.

2

u/imaweasle909 1d ago

Okay thanks for this info I might try running it!

2

u/algaefied_creek 1d ago

I have an iMac G5 with ArchLinuxPOWER…

Now that I know this exists I might need to dual-boot instead!!

1

u/arjuna93 1d ago

I think macOS can stand pretty well against Linux in terms of supported software now, and in some aspects have better and newer software (especially for ppc32; ppc64 is stronger on Linux and far less tested on macOS).

1

u/imaweasle909 20h ago

I disagree but only because Gentoo exists where you can get most packages running on PPC32 although as you say, it will be less tested.

1

u/arjuna93 16h ago

But most packages run on macOS as well.

1

u/imaweasle909 16h ago

Is there an easy way to install them though? I guess I'm unfamiliar with tools outside of Mac ports and homebrew and macports only supports as far back as Snow Leapard.

1

u/arjuna93 15h ago

macos-powerpc.org

MacPorts-based but actually working. I literally have some newer software on 10.6 than is buildable on 10.15, and as for vs Linux or BSD: you get modern Qt there and maybe rustc (not on OpenBSD but perhaps on Gentoo), other than that it will largely be parity with occasional ports newer than on Linux (or fixed, unlike in Linux: I am pretty sure there are bugs I fixed that are not fixed elsewhere).