About Compiling For Mac OS X

We have done quite a bit of work towards unraveling mysteries presented by the recent Xcode (2.5 and 3.0) and Mac OS X (10.5) releases. Here is the rundown of the current state of things. If you want maximum compatibility in the Universal Binary you create, your build system needs to meet the following criteria:

  • Must be running Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
  • Must be using XCode 2.3, XCode 2.4(untested), or XCode 2.5
  • Must have MacOSX10.2.8.sdk, MacOSX10.3.9.sdk, and MacOSX10.4u.sdk installed. (These come with XCode, but you may have to install them manually)

The make-macosx-ub.sh script should detect all of this for you. The resulting binary should work on all Mac OS X 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and 10.5 systems.
You can still build a Universal Binary when running Mac OS X 10.5 using XCode 2.5 or 3.0, but the best you can do is compatibility with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 systems.