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Ask HN: Will the dev tools that don't work on M1 chips be fixed next year?

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Ask HN: Will the dev tools that don't work on M1 chips be fixed next year?

#1

Post by allthemcodes »

I'd like to buy a new 16" Macbook Pro but don't know if its safer to buy the current model or wait for next year's model with the M1 (or M2 or whatever it will be called) chip.

It seems like there's a number of things that don't yet work or are buggy on the M1 MBP's: https://medium.com/better-programming/apple-silicon-the-dev-tools-that-work-and-dont-work-yet-5288452b9b4a

Just wondering if most of those things will be fixed next year.

Re: Ask HN: Will the dev tools that don't work on M1 chips be fixed next year?

#2

Post by exged »

I'd expect most things to work and have native versions by next year, with the notable exceptions of virtualization software and package managers like Homebrew.

Virtualization software likely will never be fixed if you expect an x86 guests to work. The hardware obviously cannot natively virtualize x86, nor can Rosetta cannot emulate privileged x86 code. x86 Docker images will also not work.

Homebrew itself will probably be ported to ARM by then. However, there will likely be a long tail of packages that won't have ARM builds for some time.

Re: Ask HN: Will the dev tools that don't work on M1 chips be fixed next year?

#3

Post by patrickaljord »

If you rely on docker you won't be able to use it until at least February unless they use a pre-release of go which they haven't say they would do. VM are a no-go too. My guess is that it should be runnable by March/May but still buggy enough to be a pain to work on until the end of the year. So maybe you'd be better off waiting for M2 if it gets released by the end of 2021.

Re: Ask HN: Will the dev tools that don't work on M1 chips be fixed next year?

#4

Post by yryan »

exged wrote: post #2

I'd expect most things to work and have native versions by next year, with the notable exceptions of virtualization software and package managers like Homebrew. Virtualization software likely will never be fixed if you expect an x86 guests to work. The hardware obviously cannot natively virtualize x86, nor can Rosetta cannot emulate privileged x86 code. x86 Docker images will also not work. Homebrew itself will proba…

Homebrew works under Rosetta 2. Homebrew on ARM has partial functionality. https://brew.sh/2020/12/01/homebrew-2.6.0/

Re: Ask HN: Will the dev tools that don't work on M1 chips be fixed next year?

#5

Post by wmf »

exged wrote: post #2

I'd expect most things to work and have native versions by next year, with the notable exceptions of virtualization software and package managers like Homebrew. Virtualization software likely will never be fixed if you expect an x86 guests to work. The hardware obviously cannot natively virtualize x86, nor can Rosetta cannot emulate privileged x86 code. x86 Docker images will also not work. Homebrew itself will proba…

You can run x86 VMs and Docker containers (slowly) using QEMU.

Re: Ask HN: Will the dev tools that don't work on M1 chips be fixed next year?

#7

Post by egsmi »

Do you really need all those tools or just a subset? Of those that you need and don’t work yet, have you considered reaching out to the developers for an ETA or priority of the port? People can reply however they want but if the developers of the tools you happen to need don’t write the code, a forum comment won’t amount to much.

Re: Ask HN: Will the dev tools that don't work on M1 chips be fixed next year?

#8

Post by PeterisP »

exged wrote: post #2

I'd expect most things to work and have native versions by next year, with the notable exceptions of virtualization software and package managers like Homebrew. Virtualization software likely will never be fixed if you expect an x86 guests to work. The hardware obviously cannot natively virtualize x86, nor can Rosetta cannot emulate privileged x86 code. x86 Docker images will also not work. Homebrew itself will proba…

Virtualization not working will require a big change of habits, at least for me. On my current macbook, all the compatibility issues of needing a particular piece of weird software for some client project have been easily solvable by keeping a bunch of VMs with various Windows and Linux versions. You don't want to pollute your host with various short-lived installations of different (often incompatible) versions of various tools anyway, having separate virtual environments (with revertable snapshots!) for separate tool needs is quite convenient.

Hopefully we'll have ARM versions of Linux working as virtualization guests on Apple hardware soon, but losing Windows compatibility will be a pain for me, it will require either ignoring the new Mac hardware, or keeping a separate Windows laptop, which is a pain.

Perhaps having a remotely accessible cloud Windows machine will be the way to go; last time I tried it, it was a pain to use the GUI remotely doe to stutter but perhaps now neworks and machines are faster and this might work better.

Re: Ask HN: Will the dev tools that don't work on M1 chips be fixed next year?

#9

Post by vr46 »

I bought an MBP 16 in January, pretty fully loaded with the max chip, max ram and max gpu at the time, and I cannot recommend you buy this machine or even a newer version of it right now. It’s great, but real battery life is abysmal, it runs very hot, although this has been massively improved by switching from FF to Safari, and I usually have Turbo Booster Pro restricting the cpu to base speed. And, not much uses the GPU. iTerm can, big deal, and Snap Camera does, big deal, but DaVinci Resolve free doesn’t, and neither does Capture Pro or ffmpeg, so it’s all a bit pointless right now. Find a compromise Intel machine for now.

P.S. also: lots of fans.

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