HOWTO_SETUP

Summary is available at http://macos-powerpc.org

There are two options with the OS:

1. Developer build of 10a190, see: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/snow-leopard-on-unsupported-powerpc-macs.2232031

2. Release of Snow Leopard (10.6.8) with select OS components rebuilt or replaced to support PowerPC natively, see:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/10-6-snow-leopard-powerpc-development.2439769

10a190 is better tested (over a few years) and almost unmodified (some kexts had to be replaced to fix booting),
however it is somewhat in between 10.5.8 and 10.6 in terms of the SDK and has minor, but noticeable issues
with Finder and System Preferences.
10.6.8 is recent, and its testing is in a preliminary stage. Most of issues related to everyday usage
has been fixed, and presumably it is more stable and better optimized; one notable caveat is that UDP
is broken presently, and the only way to have networking is DNS-over-TCP (for example, via `utdns` utility).

Up till now (2024.12) everything in this repo and in http://macos-powerpc.org/packages was based on 10a190.
This is likely to change shortly, and compatibility with 10a190 may partly be lost in pre-built binaries.
If you have any concerns over this, please reach out via Discussions, Issues or e-mail.

IMPORTANT NOTICE RE X11 / GTK APPS:

Do not use Apple X11 or XQuartz with this repo, it is known to be broken.
Recommended way is to remove both, see: https://www.xquartz.org/FAQs.html
And install `xorg-server-legacy` from PowerPC Ports or upstream MacPorts.

Everything that uses wxWidgets must build against wxGTK. Native wxWidgets are broken up to macOS 10.8
(ports will build against them, but will not work correctly).

GTK4 has a bug which upstream is disinterested to fix. Set GSK_RENDERER=cairo in the environment
to make GTK4 apps usable. GTK3 works normally without any specific tweaks.

NOTICE ON COMPILERS

Besides Xcode gcc, the following compilers are good to use: gcc14, gcc13 or gcc-powerpc (development version);
gcc10-bootstrap is supposed to be used exclusively to build the essential toolchain components.
Versions prior to gcc10 are to be avoided. Clangs were and are broken, do not use them for anything.
Building against libc++ is untested, but in principle possible with gcc and libcxx-powerpc runtime.