Apple silicon builds

[AshCripps]

refs: nodejs/TSC#886 (comment)

We need to kickstart the discussion again on how we plan to support the new Mac hardware which is due to be announced on Nov 10th.

We last had the discussion in the build meeting in july where we had some discussion as to whether to do 2 binaries or to go for fat binaries.

We also need to discuss sourcing hardware - We currently have two DTKs kindly donated by macstadium but no release machine as of yet and these DTKs will go back to apple at some point.

To Do:

• Add 11.0 to versionselector to ensure we build only on master
• Enable the macos-arm job in normal test regressions
• Get the DTKs back into CI for testing
• Test compiling and running node natively on the mac arm hardware
• Test if a current release runs on the new hardware through the translation layer
• Figure out a source of hardware to add to our CI for when our DTKs go back to apple
• Note down size difference in binaries between: intel, arm and fat.

[mhdawson]

I think we'd agree to do fat binaries as they seemed preferable for a number of reasons.

In terms of hardware longer term, we should see if macstadium has a longer term answer for that now as having them provide the hardware is the easiest path for us.

[rvagg]

+1 to fat (again, I think? I don't recall). We used to do fat for x86+x64 until we ripped that out for io.js (and then Node 4). There's still echoes of the code to do it in nodejs/node Makefile and tools/ and it's certainly in the git history.

For hardware, we really should have redundancy here too. Same approach as we have for x64. Rely on macstadium (assuming they'll let us use official hardware for this) but get our own and ask nearForm if they'll kindly host them for us as backups.

[gengjiawen]

We have PRs need to run on silicon too: nodejs/node#35986.

[mhdawson]

@rvagg redundancy makes sense. I don't think we can order ARM mac mini H/W yet, correct me if I'm wrong on that and I can start the discussion with the Foundation.

[rvagg]

No, we're really just waiting to see Apple's announcement tomorrow. Rumours are suggesting laptops, which is probably not going to be helpful. But 🤞 we may get mini's out of this in which case we should jump straight on it.

[AshCripps]

Yeah the event looks to be the announcement of just 2 laptops according to rumours at least - we might be another year or so away from iMacs and mac minis.

[AshCripps]

Turns out they did announce new mac minis so it might be worth speaking with the guys at macstadium again to see their timeline.

[rvagg]

@mhdawson can you start the discussion with the Foundation about getting a couple of minis? And we'll need to make sure we have somewhere to put them, I guess we need to probe nearForm on this unless we have other options.

[AshCripps]

just as an FYI I am working to get the DTKs into our regular regression runs to get some testing at least on the platform - I managed to brick one updating to the latest big sur but macstadium have swapped it out for another one. Im waiting to hear back if its safe to update the second one before I carry on.

[mhdawson]

@rvagg last time we also asked for virtualization software so that we could have a 2 vms on each mac mini so that 1 for test and one for release would be good enough. Do you know if the same software will work on the arm machines?

We'll also need to agree on the specs. From https://www.apple.com/ca/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini there only seem to be 2 choices, one with the only difference being the SSD size.

[AshCripps]

Key difference this time is the minis are 8 core instead of 6 core so we may be able to get away with running 3 VMs on one mini, The next issue is VMware fusion which I cant seem to find any more mention besides "soon" or "we are working on it" for M1 support