[tex-live] use of x86_64-darwin only in mactex 2010

[Adam R. Maxwell]

On Jun 20, 2010, at 11:48 AM, Justin C. Walker wrote:

> 
> On Jun 20, 2010, at 10:54 , Adam R. Maxwell wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Jun 20, 2010, at 10:48 AM, Victor Ivrii wrote:
>> 
>>> One can complain a bit that MacTeX installs x86_64-darwin  binaries on
>>> SL even if it is not 64-bit machine capable (as my intel
>>> pre-Core-Duo-2 MacBookPro)
>> 
>> One /should/ complain about that.  I'm copying the mactex list to make
>> sure that Dick sees this, since I thought he was going to check
>> hardware compatibility.

Dick noted on the mactex list (too many lists here!) that he checks the
architecture before setting up the TeX distribution hierarchy, so even
though the x86_64 binaries are installed, the user won't see them in the
system preference pane.  They are present on all architectures, even
ppc.  Sorry for the misunderstanding there...

> I don't want to make too much of this, but there are a couple of issues to consider:
> 
> - it may provide a (slight) savings of space to full universal binaries (ppc, i386, x86_64) full universal binaries (ppc, i386, x86_64).  Maybe  default is to install the universal binaries, with an option to select a specific architecture ("lipo" can thin them down).  Once it's figured out, it's just a push of a button :-}

The problem is that the x86_64 binaries won't run on 10.5, so lipoing
them into a single 3-way universal binary won't work, since there's no
way to force x86_64 to only run on 10.6 (the system will check
LSMinimumSystemVersionByArchitecture, but that would be madness).

> - some folk may have a bootable drive that they use on multiple systems.  Having "64-bit only" being the only option will screw that up.

I don't believe there are any circs under which it will be 64-bit only.
All possible architectures are always installed under MacTeX.

-- 
Adam