Native Apple Silicon Support

[fishcharlie.code@…]

Is there any chance we can get a Apple Silicon native build for JOSM? That way it won't have to use Rosetta 2 and will lead to increased performance.

[taylor.smock]

I think it comes down to either (a) someone donating Mac ARM hardware to the JOSM organization (so they can add it as a Github Actions runner) or (b) a JOSM developer having an ARM M1 Mac lying around that they can add to the build process.

Until either (a) or (b) happens, there probably won't be any official ARM M1 Mac builds. For example, I could probably rig up a process to do the build on one of my coworker's laptops (they have an M1 Mac), but it would be better to do it right. For various reasons (can you trust me? Probably. But you shouldn't trust me for security purposes.)

[GerdP]

Is this about the installation package which would contain a different JRE?

[taylor.smock]

Replying to GerdP:

Is this about the installation package which would contain a different JRE?

I believe so.

Specifically, a JRE built for the ARM Macs.

@fishcharlie.code: OpenWebStart may automatically download the "right" architecture. Can you try that?

https://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Download#Webstart

Alternatively, you can download Azul here: ​https://www.azul.com/downloads/?version=java-17-lts&os=macos&architecture=arm-64-bit&package=jre and run the josm.jar file.

[Don-vip]

Replying to taylor.smock:

Until either (a) or (b) happens, there probably won't be any official ARM M1 Mac builds. For example, I could probably rig up a process to do the build on one of my coworker's laptops (they have an M1 Mac), but it would be better to do it right. For various reasons (can you trust me? Probably. But you shouldn't trust me for security purposes.)

I trust you but you're right, there is no chance this is going to happen :D This has to be officially supported by OpenJDK, Azul and Github to happen.

OpenJDK/Azul is done: ​https://www.azul.com/newsroom/azul-announces-support-of-java-builds-of-openjdk-for-apple-silicon/
Github not yet: ​https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/805

[taylor.smock]

Replying to Don-vip:

OpenJDK/Azul is done: ​https://www.azul.com/newsroom/azul-announces-support-of-java-builds-of-openjdk-for-apple-silicon/
Github not yet: ​https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/805

I'm kind of surprised that Github doesn't support Apple Silicon yet (at least as "bring your own runner", somewhat similar to GitLab). I would have assumed that a recompile would have it "just working", but apparently they depend upon .NET. Which recently had a release which supports Apple Arm.
So, GitHub will probably be able to support it in the next year or so.

[matheusgomesms]

Any updates? It seems Github added this in Sep 22: ​https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/805

[taylor.smock]

From that issue (~1 month ago),

As per the roadmap we are targeting some time later this year for GitHub hosted M1 support :)

With that said, self-hosted Apple arm runners can be done. While I could probably get my employer to let me put a runner on one of our extraneous machines, there are some security concerns with that. What happens if that machine gets hacked and the JOSM signing key gets leaked?