LC & Catalina; macOS 10.15.x; Xcode 11.3.x; iOS 13.3.x support ???

[Pi Digital]

Hi Panos

Thank you for your lengthy descriptive explanation. It’s appreciated. 

Perhaps this should be written in the Release Notes - you know, for clarification. So that a newbie or even an oldie knows what to expect. If the RN says it’s not supported then they/we will be ‘scared off from using it. ‘It’ being either LC or the new OSs/Xcode’s/Eclipses/Whatever’s. Especially as you put so much effort into writing it. 

Still, your fix has been sat on github for 2months held ‘at the mercy’ of waiting for other bugs to be fixed and features added/completed. In 3 or months time Apple will ‘announce’ another major version of iOS MacOS and so on. And, at this rate it will be another 12 months (start your stopwatch) before ‘support’ is added. And so the cycle continues. It could have been sorted and fed out 6mths ago without a doubt. 

It has to be remembered that LC is not the only software we have running on our systems, each with their own set of ‘requirements’. So of course we will have need for the latest os and Xcode. And then the need for multiple Xcode and terminal commands to avoid conflicts. So clarity is definitely needed and appreciated. Hopefully by painting a picture of the other side of the fence helps in understanding ‘why’ getting it out of the door quicker is very much needed. 

All the best

Sean Cole
Pi Digital

> On 13 Mar 2020, at 07:46, panagiotis merakos via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> Just a clarification, as this has been a source of confusion for a long
> time.
> 
> The current LC 9.x versions do support MacOS Catalina. Also, with the
> latest LiveCode versions (9.5.1 and 9.6 DP-2 - and possibly earlier
> versions too) you can still deploy apps for iOS 13.x - and these apps will
> continue to run even on iOS 14 and 15 in the future.
> 
> You do NOT need the latest Xcode for building apps, if you want your apps
> to run in the latest iOS version.
> 
> There are 2 different places where the iOS version comes to play:
> 
> (1) The iOS version of the device you want your app to run
> 
> (2) The iOS SDK version which is included in each Xcode
> 
> For (1) - you do not need the latest Xcode. Building apps with older Xcode
> versions will work just fine if your device runs the most recent iOS
> version. In fact, when a new LC version is released, and it includes
> support for building with the latest Xcode - it still includes support for
> building with older Xcode versions, if your Mac runs an older MacOS version.
> 
> So one might ask, why do we need to use the latest iOS SDK version (to
> build the app), so why is the LC team each time struggling to include
> support for the latest Xcode (which includes the latest iOS SDK version)?
> 
> The answer is we do NOT always need to use the latest iOS SDK version. But
> when do we *actually* might need it? Well, in the following cases:
> 
> (a) If you want to submit your app to the AppStore and Apple *requires*
> your app to have been built against a minimum iOS SDK version. When this is
> the case, we always release a LC version that supports the required
> Xcode/iOS_SDK version before the deadline posed by Apple
> 
> (b) If your app can support a specific new feature that will be available
> only when built against a specific iOS SDK (imagine iOS SDKs as libraries -
> a newer one can contain new functions/features, so if you want to use these
> new functions you have to use this specific iOS SDK to built the app). An
> example is the TouchID/FaceID support.
> 
> However, note that iOS SDKs with new features are released in the *major*
> Xcode versions, and the minor releases are usually just bugfixes in Xcode
> itself, for which you really do not care, as you do not actually use the
> Xcode IDE to built the iOS app.
> 
> So really in the vast majority of the cases we only need to support major
> Xcode releases, something which does happen, without major delays. So,
> since you can currently build apps against the iOS 13.1 SDK (i.e. using
> Xcode 11.1), there is really no need to add support for Xcode 11.2 or 11.3.
> 
> Similarly, when Xcode 12.x was released, we needed to add support for Xcode
> 12 (or 12.1), but not really for Xcode 12.2, 12.3 etc
> 
> The main reason we continue to add support for minor Xcode releases is that:
> 
> - we do not want to ask people keeping multiple (older) versions of Xcode
> in their machines.
> - a lot of people have enabled auto-updates, so their Xcode version will be
> updated automatically
> - someone downloading Xcode for the first time will probably download the
> latest version
> 
> So for these reasons we are trying - but not always successfully - to
> support the latest minor Xcode updates.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> Panos
> --
> 
>> On Fri, 13 Mar 2020 at 07:18, Richard Gaskin via use-livecode <
>> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Sean Cole wrote:
>> 
>>> I've added updates to this bug relating to the script editor issues
>>> and crashes
>>> 
>>> https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=22389
>> 
>> Thank you, Sean.  I'm signed onto the report, and will add any notes I
>> can if I see this on my Mac.
>> 
>> --
>>  Richard Gaskin
>>  Fourth World Systems
>>  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
>>  ____________________________________________________________________
>>  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com
>> 
>> 
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