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Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

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Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We go one step further and don’t use Docker either!

You just use system installs? Mind sharing the stack? What do you do to manage language versioning?

Yes. I'm on macOS, and our stack is Node.js + Postgres + Hasura.

I use Homebrew for Postgres where IME the version doesn't tend to matter too much as long as it's new enough.

Node is managed using either nodenv or asdf which both allow you to install multiple versions side-by-side and control which one runs in a given directory using a .node-version file containing the desired version number (I use asdf, most of my colleagues use nodenv - they're compatible with each other).

Hasura is the only one that's a bit of a pain as they don't provide native binaries at all (only a docker image). So we compile that from source. They do at least provide comprehensive instructions (https://github.com/hasura/graphql-engine/blob/master/server/...), and I didn't have too much trouble even though I'd never used Haskell before.

The sub-second restarts are totally worth it!

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#272
post #18

I tried going from a 2018 MBP to M1 MBA in 2021 and had too many issues to make it my primary machine. Docker and Android development were particularly brutal to get going reliably IIRC. The M1 performed well for the things it could do, but I still needed the MBP (which constantly reached 100% CPU) for other stuff, so I ended up doing a horrible multi-machine setup with Synergy. That was a dark time in my life ;) The…

> Docker and Android development were particularly brutal to get going reliably IIRC. Android? Android Studio has problems? That would be vital to me if i went Mx.

Was only a problem with my first try (the Macbook air, right after release)

My 2nd try with the MBP in 2022, following the guide I linked above, Android Studio has been perfect.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#273
> Then there's just other annoyances, like having to run a VM in the background for Docker all the time because 'real' Docker is not possible on macOS.

As far as I know, this has nothing to do with the M1 or ARM. This has always been the case. How else would you run Linux containers on a non-Linux OS?

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#274
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - uniform, comprehensive, robust package management, including for the system software macOS uses Software Update to manage system packages, and AppStore to manage that world, and for everything else, MacPorts (if you care about your system homebrew is not an option). > - GNU coreutils and related utilities (sed, grep, find, etc.) macOS has a userland... you seriously can't find /usr/bin/sed in macOS? Seriously? >…

I'm surprised and kind of impressed by the level of vitriol in this comment, especially given the relatively narrow focus of the comment of mine it's replying to, which didn't really consider the merits of macOS itself so much as the differences that give using it a very different vibe from using Linux for people who are used to desktop Linux. I'm not going to reply to the ‘substance’ of your post but I will say that…

Just wanted to chime in that you're absolutely right. That comment was unnecessarily filled with hate and obsessive elitism. It's really weird that someone would take time out of their weekend to write that.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#275

I work at a SaaS vendor. We are completing a project to upgrade to Java 11 for most of our micro services. This will also mean we do multiarch container builds for our entire pipeline. Once that is complete, we will begin developing against ARM as the primary target for devs. This is needed because we are in the middle of a hardware refresh so by EOY, something like 80% of devs will be running on M1 Pro. This should…

If you work in Java, why use containers? You already get a singular, portable deployment artifact.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#276

I work at a SaaS vendor. We are completing a project to upgrade to Java 11 for most of our micro services. This will also mean we do multiarch container builds for our entire pipeline. Once that is complete, we will begin developing against ARM as the primary target for devs. This is needed because we are in the middle of a hardware refresh so by EOY, something like 80% of devs will be running on M1 Pro. This should…

If you work in Java, why use containers? You already get a singular, portable deployment artifact.

Deployed onto what? Deployed how? Jars are great, but the artifact itself doesn’t answer these questions. Granted, images themselves don’t answer these questions on their own, but there are options available that easily admit deployments that don’t assume everything’s a jar.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#277

I got an M1 MacBook Pro from work last year, and expecting to pay the price for being an early adopter, I set up my previous Intel-based MBP nearby in case I ran into any problems or needed to run one of my existing virtual machines. (I do varied development projects ranging from compiling kernels to building web frontends.) In reality I have hardly turned on the Intel MBP at all since I got it. At all. Docker and VM…

Rosetta's biggest flaw is lack of AVX support.

We had to put so much effort to just run things on Rosetta because all of our compiled code had AVX enabled. We also needed to chase down pre-compiled binaries and re-compile them without AVX, we still haven't finished this work.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#278

On the whole it's been good. I work on scientific software, so the biggest technical issue I face day-to-day is that OpenMP based threading seems almost fundamentally incompatible with M1. https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/674456 The summary of the issue is that OpenMP threaded code typically assumes that a) processors are symmetric and b) there isn't a penalty for threads yielding. On M1 / macOS, what happen…

Can you not do this using the CPU affinity environment variables and just ignoring the efficiency codes? I was under the impression you could bind to specific cores with: GOMP_CPU_AFFINITY=“1 2 5 6” With thread 1 bound to core 1, thread 2 on core 2, thread 3 on core 5, thread 4 on core 6. I don’t have an M1 to play around on but I’d have assumed that the cores are fixed IDs. Aside from that, if the workload is predic…

Unfortunately, the thread affinity api on m1 doesn't work that way, at least based on what I've been able to understand by reading here: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/703361 and more specifically this linked source file: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu/blob/bb611c8f...

I agree with your other points though!

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#280
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised and kind of impressed by the level of vitriol in this comment, especially given the relatively narrow focus of the comment of mine it's replying to, which didn't really consider the merits of macOS itself so much as the differences that give using it a very different vibe from using Linux for people who are used to desktop Linux. I'm not going to reply to the ‘substance’ of your post but I will say that…

Just wanted to chime in that you're absolutely right. That comment was unnecessarily filled with hate and obsessive elitism. It's really weird that someone would take time out of their weekend to write that.

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