Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Anything beyond the basics in using the LiveCode language. Share your handlers, functions and magic here.

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Emily-Elizabeth
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Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by Emily-Elizabeth » Sun Mar 22, 2026 3:55 pm

stam wrote:
Sun Mar 22, 2026 11:12 am
I can help, time permitting.
My actual (non-coding) work is absorbing all my time right now (at present I’m 7 days into 12 days continuous 34 hour on-call), so I can probably tackle smaller discrete tasks rather than open-ended ones. Let me know…
Thanks for the offer. If you have the time and skills, we do need new branding. Feel free to contact me directly at <emily-elizabeth.howard AT outlook.com>

stam
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Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by stam » Sun Mar 22, 2026 4:18 pm

Emily-Elizabeth wrote:
Sat Mar 21, 2026 4:41 pm
https://github.com/emily-elizabeth/HyperXTalk
You can download and follow the build instructions, but this only makes a build for ARM Macs. It still has all the Livecode branding, so need to get working on that.
I thought I'd check this out. I'm on MacOS 26.2, and have Xode 26.3 installed. At some point I installed Homebrew and updated it so that libffi was updated to 3.5.2, which apparently is required. Seems the code provided is for python2, but I have python 3.13.7 installed. Also seems to be coded for openSSL 1.x, but current is openSSL 3.x

I had quite some difficulty actually compiling for ARM. I managed in the end to get a success message on compile with *a lot* of input from Claude AI.
EDIT: The crash on launch was because I missed your last 2 steps after make compile-mac
Actually launches well now - thank you!






PS: The changes required to get this to build are below. Some of this may just be AI confabulating, but was the only way I could get 'Success' on make compile-mac:

1. Build libffi from source for ARM64
The prebuilt libffi.a was missing. Run prebuilt/scripts/build-libffi-mac-arm64.sh to compile it from the bundled source in thirdparty/libffi/git_master/.

2. Fix python → python3 symlink
gen_icu_data_remove_list script called python (Python 2), which no longer exists on modern macOS:
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python3 /usr/local/bin/python

3. Build missing third-party libraries from source
Several prebuilt .a files were absent. Built them via Xcode and copied to prebuilt/lib/mac/:
libskia, libsqlite, libxml, libzip, libcairo, libxslt, libiodbc

4. Copy libffi headers into the build include path
ffi.h, ffitarget.h, ffi_arm64.h, and related headers from thirdparty/libffi/git_master/darwin_common/include/ copied to _build/mac/Debug/include/.

5. OpenSSL 3.x API renames in prebuilt headers
The prebuilt .a libraries were OpenSSL 3.x but the headers still declared OpenSSL 1.x names. Fixed by renaming declarations and adding backward-compat macros:
prebuilt/include/openssl/evp.h — renamed declarations and appended:
c# define EVP_CIPHER_CTX_block_size EVP_CIPHER_CTX_get_block_size
# define EVP_CIPHER_CTX_key_length EVP_CIPHER_CTX_get_key_length
# define EVP_CIPHER_key_length EVP_CIPHER_get_key_length
prebuilt/include/openssl/ssl.h — renamed declaration and appended:
c# define SSL_get_peer_certificate SSL_get1_peer_certificate

6. Update ssl.stubs to match OpenSSL 3.x symbol names
thirdparty/libopenssl/ssl.stubs is the source for the generated weak stub library. Updated four entries:
EVP_CIPHER_key_length → EVP_CIPHER_get_key_length
EVP_CIPHER_CTX_key_length → EVP_CIPHER_CTX_get_key_length
EVP_CIPHER_CTX_block_size → EVP_CIPHER_CTX_get_block_size
SSL_get_peer_certificate → SSL_get1_peer_certificate
Then deleted the stale _build/mac/Debug/libopenssl_stubs.a to force regeneration.

7. Install libffi 3.5.2 via Homebrew
The Xcode project hardcoded /opt/homebrew/Cellar/libffi/3.5.2/. Updated Homebrew to get the exact version:
bashbrew update && brew upgrade libffi
Also copied `ffi.h` and `ffitarget.h` from Homebrew into `prebuilt/include/`.
**9. Rebuild `libsqlite.a` with missing C++ dataset classes**
The prebuilt `libsqlite.a` only contained the raw SQLite C API. The C++ wrapper classes needed by `dbsqlite` were never compiled in. Manually compiled and added to the archive:
thirdparty/libsqlite/src/dataset.cpp
thirdparty/libsqlite/src/qry_dat.cpp
thirdparty/libsqlite/src/sqlitedataset.cpp
thirdparty/libsqlite/src/sqlitedecode.cpp
Rebuilt the archive cleanly by deleting the old one first and using ar rcs from scratch.

Emily-Elizabeth
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Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by Emily-Elizabeth » Sun Mar 22, 2026 5:21 pm

Thanks for the notes, I'll be sure to include them on the GitHub. :D

Emily-Elizabeth
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Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by Emily-Elizabeth » Sun Mar 22, 2026 10:28 pm

Added a pre-release to the GItHub repo. I forgot to notarize it, so hopefully it runs for you. The web browser widget has been updated to use WKWebView. It doesn't compile standalones yet, but I'm working around the standalone builder to know about ARM builds.

stam
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Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2006 9:39 pm

Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by stam » Sun Mar 22, 2026 11:15 pm

your notes on notarising worked fine when I actually noticed them and put them into use ;)
I think a lot of the issues I had were from malformed paths for Python and not having up-to-date Homebrew installed.

The IDE seems to work very well on macOS Tahoe! Kudos!
I'll re-test building it to confirm the other changes that may be needed.

Emily-Elizabeth
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Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by Emily-Elizabeth » Mon Mar 23, 2026 12:28 am

stam wrote:
Sun Mar 22, 2026 11:15 pm
your notes on notarising worked fine when I actually noticed them and put them into use ;)
I think a lot of the issues I had were from malformed paths for Python and not having up-to-date Homebrew installed.

The IDE seems to work very well on macOS Tahoe! Kudos!
I'll re-test building it to confirm the other changes that may be needed.
Thanks for testing it out, I'm doing lots of updates and will be getting rid of the installer and just go the DMG route. I'm removing the mobile stuff, as you can't submit GPL to the stores (plus I'll have enough on my hands with the desktop platforms). I'm also removing the Emscripten stuff as it never seemed to work when I tried it.

Emily-Elizabeth
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Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by Emily-Elizabeth » Mon Mar 23, 2026 3:22 am

There is a new DMG on the GitHub release page that has been signed and notarized.

Emily-Elizabeth
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Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by Emily-Elizabeth » Mon Mar 23, 2026 5:03 pm

We now have our own Discourse forums running at https://hyperxtalk.discourse.group so feel free to join in the discussion (or just lurk whatever floats your boat :lol: )

bn
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Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by bn » Mon Mar 23, 2026 9:51 pm

Hi Emily-Elizabeth
There is a new DMG on the GitHub release page that has been signed and notarized.
I can not find the "DMG". Could you post a link please?
I assume that "DMG" is the usual way to distribute an app on a Mac. Compiling and code signing is beyond my skills...

Kind regards
Bernd

Emily-Elizabeth
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Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by Emily-Elizabeth » Mon Mar 23, 2026 10:15 pm

bn wrote:
Mon Mar 23, 2026 9:51 pm
I can not find the "DMG". Could you post a link please?
I assume that "DMG" is the usual way to distribute an app on a Mac. Compiling and code signing is beyond my skills...
Sorry about that. I play with this stuff all day so forget that things are not so easy when you don't. Here's the link: https://github.com/emily-elizabeth/Hype ... /tag/0.9.3

bn
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Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by bn » Mon Mar 23, 2026 11:52 pm

Hi Emily-Elisabeth,

Thank you for the link. I downloaded the app and it started alright. Will have to play with it tomorrow since it is getting late over here in Europe.

Kind regards
Bernd

Emily-Elizabeth
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Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by Emily-Elizabeth » Tue Mar 24, 2026 12:14 am

bn wrote:
Mon Mar 23, 2026 11:52 pm
Thank you for the link. I downloaded the app and it started alright. Will have to play with it tomorrow since it is getting late over here in Europe.
Glad it "worked" for you ;-) Have fun with it tomorrow, just remember it's still in "development" so if you find something that doesn't work, let me know.

RogGuay
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Re: Livecode Community on Apple Silicon

Post by RogGuay » Tue Mar 24, 2026 6:32 am

Hi Emily-Elizabeth,

Thank you for your amazing work on this. I downloaded the DMG and had no problem opening LiveCode Community on Mac OS 26.
I'll be playing with it tomorrow.

Many Cheers to you,

Roger

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