{"id":4303,"date":"2020-11-24T08:53:39","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T14:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/?p=4303"},"modified":"2020-11-24T08:53:39","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T14:53:39","slug":"detecting-macos-universal-binaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/detecting-macos-universal-binaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Detecting macOS Universal Binaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple has transitioned from different instruction set architectures<\/a> several times now throughout its history. First, from 680×0 to PowerPC<\/a>, then from PowerPC to Intel x86<\/a>.
\nAnd now, in 2020 from Intel to ARM<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During the first transition 680×0 code ran in an emulator. In subsequent transitions Apple has utilized the translation application Rosetta<\/a>. From Apple’s documentation, “Rosetta is meant to ease the transition to Apple silicon, giving you time to create a universal binary for your app. It is not a substitute for creating a native version of your app.”<\/p>\n

So, how can you tell if an application is already a “universal binary” that provides both x86 and ARM instructions? Open Terminal<\/a> and find the application’s executable code. For standard macOS applications it is located in \/Applications\/Application.app\/Contents\/MacOS\/<\/code>. For example, Safari’s executable is at \/Applications\/Safari.app\/Contents\/MacOS\/Safari<\/code>. Now, we’re going to use the file<\/a> Unix command to give us information as to the contents.<\/p>\n

[code lang=text]
\n% file \/Applications\/Safari.app\/Contents\/MacOS\/Safari
\nSafari.app\/Contents\/MacOS\/Safari: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64] [arm64e:Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64e]
\nSafari.app\/Contents\/MacOS\/Safari (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
\nSafari.app\/Contents\/MacOS\/Safari (for architecture arm64e): Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64e
\n[\/code]<\/p>\n

From this you can see that the Safari<\/code> binary contains executable code for both the x86_64<\/code> (Intel) architecture and arm64e<\/code> (ARM).<\/p>\n

As of this writing, November 24, 2020, a few notable applications that are already shipping universal binaries, such as Google Chrome<\/a> and iTerm2<\/a>. Of course, Apple’s flagship applications such as Safari, Xcode, Numbers, etc. all support the new ARM instruction set.<\/p>\n

I’ve written a quick Ruby script to iterate through the executables in \/Applications<\/code>. To run on your machine:<\/p>\n

[code lang=text]
\n\/usr\/bin\/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/iachievedit\/detectUniversalBinary\/main\/detectUniversalBinary.rb)"
\n[\/code]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple has transitioned from different instruction set architectures several times now throughout its history. First, from 680×0 to PowerPC, then from PowerPC to Intel x86. And now, in 2020 from Intel to ARM. During the first transition 680×0 code ran in an emulator. In subsequent transitions Apple has utilized the translation application Rosetta. From Apple’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-arm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4303"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4318,"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4303\/revisions\/4318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}