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Web development environment on Apple Silicon

M

Macintosh1984

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 15, 2012
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Hello everyone!

I don't know if it's already clear at the moment, but for web development the Apache / PHP / MySQL / phpMyAdmin environment how are we doing? I use MAMP, but there is also XAMPP and other complete packages.

Will these environments always be native or will they run on Rosetta 2?
 
These packages are available for arm64. You could use them with Homebrew directly on the Mac or set up a Debian VM running the webserver. Debian was demonstrated during the keynote. Neither approach requires Rosetta.
 
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Great news! I looked at the Keynote, also the Debian part, I just hope that some more user friendly package arrives that requires less code from the terminal, of course I speak for myself.
 
I would like to see Docker running over Apple Virtualization. I saw on their git repo that Docker wouldn't run, nor 'would not ever run' on the DTK/A12Z. That needs to be available out of the gate, or I'll wait for AS v.next :)

If Apple was running demos running Docker via virtualization, I'm guessing it'll be introduced on the A14-ish silicon. I'm looking forward to it...
 
dgdosen said:
I would like to see Docker running over Apple Virtualization. I saw on their git repo that Docker wouldn't run, nor 'would not ever run' on the DTK/A12Z. That needs to be available out of the gate, or I'll wait for AS v.next :)

If Apple was running demos running Docker via virtualization, I'm guessing it'll be introduced on the A14-ish silicon. I'm looking forward to it...
Click to expand...

There's every reason to expect that Docker will run just fine on Arm macOS machines, just as it can today run on Arm Linux machines. However, bear in mind that the containers are not compatible with Docker when it it is running on x86/x64 architecture machines. It's an entirely different ecosystem for containers. If you're rolling your own Docker containers and running them this will likely be no big deal for your workflow. But if you make use of published images from Docker Hub or you're building images which need to run on an intel-based production platform (like many developers do) then it won't be nearly as useful as you might like.

Switching away from Intel to Arm closes the door on a large percentage of "docker pull ..." operations where the image publisher hasn't built or hasn't anticipated that Arm users might need to use the images they've produced. Docker itself can support multi-architecture image builds, but adoption of that capability in the real world remains spotty.

Failing that, you're reduced to running emulation (via QEMU or equivalent) in order to run an emulated x86 environment and virtualizing inside it. Functional, but with a painful performance hit that might not be reasonable or realistic depending on what you're doing inside Docker.
 
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If I recall correctly, Apple did mention that they are working with Docker on a solution.
 
Nugget said:
Switching away from Intel to Arm closes the door on a large percentage of "docker pull ..." operations where the image publisher hasn't built or hasn't anticipated that Arm users might need to use the images they've produced. Docker itself can support multi-architecture image builds, but adoption of that capability in the real world remains spotty.
Click to expand...

Great point.... I didn't think of that ahead of time (never tried that kind of architecture heterogeneousness). There are a few ycombinator threads on the subject. Definitely something one needs to consider, but it doesn't look like a huge issue with popular images (which to me are postgres/redis/node/nginx). I hope it's easy to mitigate in any CI/CD pipeline.

I'll bet it compares to dev using x64 and deploying to AWS Graviton....

This will probably be a boon to Graviton, and one more ulcer for someone at Intel. Makes me wonder when Apple will come out with their own cloud compute - iCloud - if you will.
 
dgdosen said:
This will probably be a boon to Graviton, and one more ulcer for someone at Intel.
Click to expand...

That is also something I was thinking about. By releasing the first capable ARM-based PC, Apple (especially if you consider Mac popularity among web devs) is making ARM data centers much more viable. An interesting option would be if Rosetta 2 is here to stay - then Apple has the only PC that can be used to develop for both x86 and ARM.
 
leman said:
That is also something I was thinking about. By releasing the first capable ARM-based PC, Apple (especially if you consider Mac popularity among web devs) is making ARM data centers much more viable. An interesting option would be if Rosetta 2 is here to stay - then Apple has the only PC that can be used to develop for both x86 and ARM.
Click to expand...

Rosetta being here to stay would be weird though. It means devs won't be that arsed to update their apps for ASi. Then again Apple could just say nothing and people simply update anyway since last time it went away quickly.
 
thenewperson said:
Rosetta being here to stay would be weird though. It means devs won't be that arsed to update their apps for ASi. Then again Apple could just say nothing and people simply update anyway since last time it went away quickly.
Click to expand...

True, but Apple could circumvent it by dropping direct support for building x86 targets in Xcode + remove app framework support. That would force the app developers to move to Apple Silicon while leaving Rosetta for legacy software support and people who write CLI-based stuff (what you’d need for data center deployment). I mean, it is still possible to build PowerPC targets using the command line, even though the official support is long gone.
 
Now seems like a pretty good time to bring this thread back.

I mainly work with web-related tech and I'm currently focusing on React Native (so there's a need for Xcode but also Node.js and all required packages, etc.). I know many apps will be compiled to run native (ARM) but regarding everything on the command line, will my same set up as be able to be run with the help of Rosetta? That is, could I continue working right now if I switched to a new MacBook? It's theoretical as I have a 16" that I'm happy with but I'm curious and as I don't know much about this side of things (x86 and ARM) it'd be nice to learn.

Thanks, everyone!
 
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Yes, you will be. You can compile and run x86 code using a M1 Mac. But I also expect native Node.js to be available very soon.
 
I don't think it's wise to jump on AS at launch for web development, there's gonna be lots of stuff to iron out and could take months (even years to get to a point where everything is seamless and you don't have to perform obscure terminal voodoo magic).

take this tweet for example:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1326236276559765504
 
tuvok86 said:
I don't think it's wise to jump on AS at launch for web development, there's gonna be lots of stuff to iron out and could take months (even years to get to a point where everything is seamless and you don't have to perform obscure terminal voodoo magic).

take this tweet for example:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1326236276559765504
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, I can totally imagine there being loads of issues and, at best, awkward workarounds for a while. That said, I imagine the popular apps will have ARM builds out relatively soon. Visual Studio Code, for example, said they'll have a build on their beta channel this month. Not sure about Slack, Discord, etc. but I imagine it's the same for them. There are bound to be issues elsewhere, though.
 
tuvok86 said:
I don't think it's wise to jump on AS at launch for web development, there's gonna be lots of stuff to iron out and could take months (even years to get to a point where everything is seamless and you don't have to perform obscure terminal voodoo magic).

take this tweet for example:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1326236276559765504
Click to expand...

This is merely a limitation of the DTK. These things are documented. The DTK lacks hardware support for 4K memory pages which makes Chrome crash. A14 and M1 however do support this. They also have per-CPU switches that enable x86-compatible memory ordering.
 
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Keen to keep an eye on this thread as well. Day to day, I build micro services written in Go or Java that are shipped as docker containers and deployed to Kubernetes. My only concern is having issues with Docker for my local development since I tend to use Docker compose so I don't have to mess around with service versioning, but not the end of the world if it doesn't work. Bound to be something I've forgotten about and will have problems with but my 2012 MBP isn't cutting it anymore 😅
 
tuvok86 said:
I don't think it's wise to jump on AS at launch for web development, there's gonna be lots of stuff to iron out and could take months (even years to get to a point where everything is seamless and you don't have to perform obscure terminal voodoo magic).

take this tweet for example:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1326236276559765504
Click to expand...
There are experimental builds already available, soon to hit the "insiders" branch:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1326237772860981249
 
A bit simpler: would an angular dev environment, node based, work on Big Sur with ARM straight away through Rosetta or wouldn't it work at all and we have to wait for the libs to be updated?
 
foxs said:
A bit simpler: would an angular dev environment, node based, work on Big Sur with ARM straight away through Rosetta or wouldn't it work at all and we have to wait for the libs to be updated?
Click to expand...

There is no reason why it wouldn't. Also, all signs point to native ARM node being released quite soon. I mean, it already works for ARM Linux.
 
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I think developers not targeting Apple platforms should wait a few months at least, maybe more (if you are deploying you code as x86 Docker images). Doesn't matter how fast Apple Silicon is if won't run the tools you need. If you are deploying to X86 containers in the cloud, I would

If you are a MacOS developer, you should probably just buy an AS Mac but hold on to your Intel Mac. An iOS developer might be able to dump the Intel Mac.
 
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For me a lack of homebrew support out of the gate is a deal breaker.. will probably sit this one out til March
 
Glad to see that VSCode will be supported soon. I am planning on developing in ReactJS and React Native so I am hoping most of the tools required work.
 
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