Catalina and 32 bit libraries.

[StellarVixen]

I’ve been digging recently and found out that Catalina hasn’t removed 32 bit libraries from kernel, but merely disabled them.

As for 32 bit system libraries, these can be copied over from Mojave.


did anyone experiment with this and managed to make 32 bit apps work?

 

[Ritsuka]

Well you could. But that would like copying everything from Mojave. In the end you would just be Mojave running instead of Catalina.

 

[StellarVixen]

Well you could. But that would like copying everything from Mojave. In the end you would just be Mojave running instead of Catalina.

not quite, it would be Catalina with a bit extra.

Apple is gonna drop the support for Mojave next year around this time. With modified Catalina, people can use 32 bit apps for a while longer and still have a supported OS.

 

[Ritsuka]

Uhm, no. The 64/32 bit libraries aren't separated files on disk. They are the same files that supports both architectures. Apple changes a lot of things in private system libraries with each macOS update. Merging the 32bit part of all the libraries with the 64bit in Catalina would be mess. It's hard enough to reuse a few components from a previous macOS release (see the "macOS whatever on unsupported Macs" threads).

 

[posguy99]

With modified Catalina, people can use 32 bit apps for a while longer and still have a supported OS.

It wouldn't be supported. It wouldn't be patchable. It'd break every time Catalina updated. Depending on what bugs post-Mojave got fixed, you'd be re-introducing those bugs by trying to copy Mojave libraries around. So you wouldn't just run Mojave because...?

 

[StellarVixen]

It wouldn't be supported. It wouldn't be patchable. It'd break every time Catalina updated. Depending on what bugs post-Mojave got fixed, you'd be re-introducing those bugs by trying to copy Mojave libraries around. So you wouldn't just run Mojave because...?

No one said “you shouldn’t just run Mojave”. This is just an experiment which could potentially buy people some more time. Heck, I don’t even depend on any 32 bit app, so I wouldn’t even benefit from this in any way.


You are right that with every update it is likely that problems can arise.



I’ll install Catalina inside virtual machine and see how it goes, I will share my results here.

 

[posguy99]

No one said “you shouldn’t just run Mojave”. This is just an experiment which could potentially buy people some more time.

It's meaningless. Apple has been telling people for years that 32-bit was going away. "More time" to do what? To blame Apple for $RANDOM_SOFTWARE_PUBLISHER not updating their software? That doesn't work, Adobe (for example) *did* update their software, people whine about that. If they haven't moved by now, some random hack isn't going to make them move *later*.

Just run Mojave.

 

[Minghold]

As for 32 bit system libraries, these can be copied over from Mojave.

Where is the exact location(s) of these in Mojave? (And are any "invisible"?)

 

[Minghold]

Just run Mojave.

That's not an option if you want Sidecar or some other feature. (Unless Sidecar can be patched to run in Mojave.)