Apple silicon support

[wpbonelli]

Architecture errors have been reported on M1/M2 macs from the distributed libmf6.dylib. Can the existing mac build avoid these somehow? An ARM distribution and CI tests could be added once GitHub-hosted ARM runners come online

[mbakker7]

Are there any plans for executables for macOS that run directly on M1/M2 Macs?
Right now it needs Rosetta. It works fine with Rosetta, but not without.

[wpbonelli]

Looks like the M1 runner beta just began this week. We could add a build for it, although it's not clear if a free-tier runner will be introduced when the beta ends. I wonder if it's possible/preferable to build a universal binary for mac

[mbakker7]

I installed Rosetta which lets you run an intel executable for Mac on an M1/M2 chip. One-line install that works in the background. For people running into this issue, open a terminal and type

/usr/sbin/softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license     

Not sure what an M1/M2 executable would do better. Even faster maybe?

[wpbonelli]

Some native ARM vs Intel + rosetta benchmarks could certainly be done.

After some reading / discussion with @jdhughes-usgs it doesn't seem like a universal binary is an option, as those can only be built with Xcode, which doesn't support fortran.

[wpbonelli]

Update here: actions/runner-images#8439 (comment)

Sounds like standard-size M1 runners will eventually be free for public projects, but no clear timeline yet

[wpbonelli]

M1 runners are now free for public repos

https://github.blog/changelog/2024-01-30-github-actions-introducing-the-new-m1-macos-runner-available-to-open-source/

[wpbonelli]

The nightly build now has a distribution for ARM macs. After updating flopy to the tip of develop e.g.

pip install https://github.com/modflowpy/flopy/archive/develop.zip

It can be installed with

get-modflow : --repo modflow6-nightly-build --ostag macarm

[wpbonelli]

As GitHub will soon retire the intel mac runners we will have to drop the intel mac distribution, leaving only apple silicon going forward.