Snow Leopard, not completely Intel only
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
and the lipo command shows this
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.
NOTE: The output from these commands were produced on a machine with a clean Snow Leopard install
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_kernelThe 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.
Architectures in the fat file: mach_kernel are: x86_64 i386 ppc
NOTE: The output from these commands were produced on a machine with a clean Snow Leopard install
