Other A new year’s lament for interoperability between modern internet-based services & Early Intel Macs running Mojave and earlier

[B S Magnet]

@TheShortTimer doesnt signal run on electron? i think you can just replace all the electron binaries and resources with the old one that works on your OS, and keep the actual web code of signal and it will function just fine. i doubt it relies heavily on any web features that don't exist in the older version of electron, it's just the silicon valley nonsense of update update update.

I tried it a couple of different ways. It doesn’t work.

Swapping only electron components — the frameworks — in part or whole, aborts immediately.

Swapping only old binaries into the new application package (Signal and the four helper applications) doesn’t work (instant abort). Swapping in new binaries to old Signal package invokes a modal box requiring at least 10.15. This doesn’t change even after changing the Info.plist on that directory to a minimum system requirements flag of 10.14. It appears the binary itself is making that determination.

There may be another approach, such as fussing with the hex code, if one knows their way around that. But for a utility which updates constantly and requires the version to be current, this isn’t really practical unless one had some kind of dedicated workflow.

I also don’t know of any developers trying to compile the current source code for Electron and Signal to run on pre-10.15 systems.

There is probably a security update now lacking in Mojave which Xcode requires when building Signal from source. I am probably wrong, but I’m guess this is the hang-up, since Signal runs on older Linux setups whose security libraries may still be kept to date for a long time, even if the kernel itself isn’t as new. It’s likely on Apple’s end, doing Apple things, such as the strict, three-OS-version support regime.

 

[TheShortTimer]

I tried it a couple of different ways. It doesn’t work.

Swapping only electron components — the frameworks — in part or whole, aborts immediately.

Swapping only old binaries into the new application package (Signal and the four helper applications) doesn’t work (instant abort). Swapping in new binaries to old Signal package invokes a modal box requiring at least 10.15. This doesn’t change even after changing the Info.plist on that directory to a minimum system requirements flag of 10.14. It appears the binary itself is making that determination.

There may be another approach, such as fussing with the hex code, if one knows their way around that. But for a utility which updates constantly and requires the version to be current, this isn’t really practical unless one had some kind of dedicated workflow.

I salute your efforts. Thanks for trying.

I also don’t know of any developers trying to compile the current source code for Electron and Signal to run on pre-10.15 systems.

A great pity - and WhatsApp is now macOS 11 only. I wonder what exactly in its code requires that X had to be abandoned...

 

[originaldotexe]

I tried it a couple of different ways. It doesn’t work.

Swapping only electron components — the frameworks — in part or whole, aborts immediately.

Swapping only old binaries into the new application package (Signal and the four helper applications) doesn’t work (instant abort). Swapping in new binaries to old Signal package invokes a modal box requiring at least 10.15. This doesn’t change even after changing the Info.plist on that directory to a minimum system requirements flag of 10.14. It appears the binary itself is making that determination.

There may be another approach, such as fussing with the hex code, if one knows their way around that. But for a utility which updates constantly and requires the version to be current, this isn’t really practical unless one had some kind of dedicated workflow.

I also don’t know of any developers trying to compile the current source code for Electron and Signal to run on pre-10.15 systems.

There is probably a security update now lacking in Mojave which Xcode requires when building Signal from source. I am probably wrong, but I’m guess this is the hang-up, since Signal runs on older Linux setups whose security libraries may still be kept to date for a long time, even if the kernel itself isn’t as new. It’s likely on Apple’s end, doing Apple things, such as the strict, three-OS-version support regime.

You removed the code signatures right? Of course, the signature would be different when changing the binary, so it won't start.

Otherwise: I think it should actually be possible to build a Chromium Legacy Electron. My friend Win32 develops the Supermium browser, which is functionally like a Chromium Legacy for Windows (works back to W2K), and it has an Electron branch, so it should be possible with CL on Macintosh as well I would think. Maybe this is something to look into since just about everything is Electron now and it would open up all of these things to work back to 10.7

 

[B S Magnet]

You removed the code signatures right? Of course, the signature would be different when changing the binary, so it won't start.

Yes, and no, that was inconsequential. No change.

Otherwise: I think it should actually be possible to build a Chromium Legacy Electron. My friend Win32 develops the Supermium browser, which is functionally like a Chromium Legacy for Windows (works back to W2K), and it has an Electron branch, so it should be possible with CL on Macintosh as well I would think. Maybe this is something to look into since just about everything is Electron now and it would open up all of these things to work back to 10.7

Well, if you know of anyone capable of building a Chromium Legacy Electron bundled with the Signal binary (clearly built with Xcode) whose code determines which version of macOS it’s attempting to be run, then please do let me know. Assembling something like this is well and beyond my technical capabilities.

 

[originaldotexe]

Well, if you know of anyone capable of building a Chromium Legacy Electron bundled with the Signal binary (clearly built with Xcode) whose code determines which version of macOS it’s attempting to be run, then please do let me know. Assembling something like this is well and beyond my technical capabilities.

I might give it a shot. I need to see what the OS requirements are to build it.

 

[B S Magnet]

I might give it a shot. I need to see what the OS requirements are to build it.

Were I in the position to do so, I’d try first with the version of macOS immediately previous to Signal’s current support baseline (which is, presently, Catalina). Then, if successful with Mojave, try with High Sierra, and so on.