[Development] Dropping official x86_64 macOS support

[Tor Arne Vestbø]

Hi all,

macOS 27 is now out, and is the first release from Apple that drops support for x86_64 hardware. It is also the last release that supports running x86_64 binaries on Apple Silicon hardware, as macOS 28 will not ship the Rosetta2 translation layer.

So the natural point for us to drop macOS x86_64 official support would be 6.13 (dev).

In practice this would mean:


  *   arm64 only build of Qt for macOS SDK binary packages
     *   Including Qt for iOS simulator
  *   no CI tests runs on macOS x86_64

We will not drop any macOS x86_64 support from the code itself, so developers can still build Qt themselves if they still need to continue to support x86_64. The amount of macOS-specific x86_64 code is quite small, and we're well covered on general x86_64 test coverage by our other platforms. So this exercise is largely about reducing CI load, on an increasingly aging hardware farm of Intel Macs.

Qt 6.12 (which was just released) of course supports both x86_64 and arm64 macOS, shipping a universal Qt for macOS SDK, and will continue to do so for the LTS lifecycle.

Please raise any questions or concerns here, thanks!

Cheers,
Tor Arne
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