The blog with no name

I initially started writing this while I was re-installing all the ruby gems that didn't work after the upgrade. So far, only the gems that build native extensions (eg. mysql, thin, eventmachine, etc..) needed to be re-installed. Then I somehow got off track and started digging around and found the things below.
Mac OS X 10.6 aka Snow Leopard comes bundled with Ruby 1.8.7p72. It also comes with Rails 2.2.2 and Rails 1.2.6. Why Apple included Rails 1.2.6 is a mystery.

With Snow Leopard supposedly being full of 64 bit goodness, I was surprised to find out that the ruby executable Universal Binary contains ppc architecture. Here is the output from the file command

$ file /usr/bin/ruby
/usr/bin/ruby: Mach-O universal binary with 3 architectures
/usr/bin/ruby (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
/usr/bin/ruby (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
/usr/bin/ruby (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc

and the lipo command shows this

$ lipo -info ruby
Architectures in the fat file: ruby are: x86_64 i386 ppc7400

Most of the executables in /usr/bin and /usr/sbin are Universal Binaries. A few of the binaries are i386 ppc7400 and an even smaller number are i386 only.
It seems that the default apps only contain the i386 and x86_64 architectures. Even the kernel is a Universal Binary.

$ lipo -info mach_kernel
Architectures in the fat file: mach_kernel are: x86_64 i386 ppc

The mach kernel on my G5 with 10.5.8 is a little over 9mb with the i386 and ppc architecture, the 10.6 kernel is 18mb and contains x86_64, i386 and ppc architectures. I can understand the need for i386 for some of the early Intel Macs, but why include the PPC architecture if Snow Leopard is going to be for Intel Macs only.

NOTE: The output from these commands were produced on a machine with a clean Snow Leopard install

The Mysql Preference Pane

When I installed MySql Server on my Mac,it created a symbolic link from /usr/local/mysql-5.1.33-osx10.5-x86 to /usr/local/mysql so I could just add /usr/local/mysql/bin to my PATH. After the Snow Leopard upgrade, that symbolic link disappeared as did a few others. This caused the MySql pref pane to be unable to find the mysqladmin command. Recreating that symbolic link allowed the pref pane to work again.

Upgrading to the 64bit version of mysql is really the way to go. The x86_64 version of Mysql doesn't appear to come a 64bit preference pane, but one is available here.

I was going to wait a while before upgrading to Snow Leopard to see what kind of issues people were having after the upgrade. But, the cheap upgrade price and the hype got the better of me so I caved.
So far, I've done one upgrade and two clean installs. The two clean installs were non eventful but I haven't put any other software on the machines yet. The upgrade on my laptop was mostly uneventful, only a few things broke and I had to update a lot of my apps.
The two clean installs took roughly twenty minutes and the laptop took almost fifty minutes. Before starting, I made two disk clones with SuperDuper and made sure I could boot from the clones.
This site was very helpful in making up my mind to even do the upgrade on my laptop.

Issues and observations:

• TextMate has a few minor issues. More info here
• I regained 10g of disk space after the upgrade.
• Git stopped working because of a PATH issue. I just re-installed git to fix it.
• The MySQL preference pane stopped working. I had to recreate the symlink I had in /usr/local and all was well. I might update to the x86_64 version of mysql.
• Phusion Passenger quit working. I haven't looked into how to fix it yet. Re-installing passenger didn't seem to help any. Passenger works after running the passenger installer again.
• The Passenger Preference Pane stopped working.
• It appears that the System Preferences app need to restart before you can use any 32-bit preference panes.(32 bit) will appear in the title bar after item name e.g. Growl(32 bit).Just something to be aware of.
• Adobe CS3 Creative Suite: I have to use the OS Dialog to open any files in Photoshop and Illustrator. Version Cue seems to be the culprit. I'm thinking about just dumping the whole thing altogether. I only use Photoshop and Illustrator and there are too many other cheaper alternatives out there.
• Nambu doesn't work.
• The bundled Ruby was upgraded to 1.8.7p72. My gems still show up, but a lot of then don't work. I haven't checked them all, but all of the gems that have to be compiled are the ones that don't work. Will probably just re-install all of them. My ruby 1.9 install seems to be unaffected. Someone has written a ruby script to find out which gems will need to be re-installed
• Had to install the new Xcode 3.2 from the install DVD.If you're an iPhone developer, don't forget to download the Snow Leopard version of the iPhone 3.0 sdk.
• I had to update a lot of software. Lucky for me, there were Snow Leopard compatible versions of most of the apps I use.

Conclusion:
Overall, I'm happy with the upgrade. The system does seem to be snappier, it wakes up much faster and most of my apps seem to perform about the same or better. The only app that seems to have trouble is iTerm,quitting the app is a lot slower.
Apps I use that had Snow Leopard updates:
Adium, Colloquy, MacJournal, OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, Teleport, Delicious Library 2, Expresso, Music Rescue, NetNewsWire, OnyX, PhoneView, Picturesque, Seesmic Desktop, Adobe Air, Times, WhatSize, WireTap Studio, CyberDuck