MacOS Big Sur

I have upgraded my MAcBook to MacOS Big Sur and have found significant issues when using Servoy Developer.

The issues are almost all related to screen refresh problems and have been reported to the main Eclipse BugZilla site. Until these are resolved (and the corresponding fixes brought into Servoy Developer) I would not recommend the upgrade. It is particularly difficult to debug in developer as the code shown in the window can be a mixture of multiple files if you jump from one source file to another (or even jump around within a file from one method to another) during debugging.

VirtualBox is also not working after upgrade (my current problem). The VB driver is no longer compatible with the new os. Several cases was already opened on VB website…
There are some refresh problems also with Eclipse. Of course they are not related to Servoy, but is seems that there are problems with the OS itself.

Hi Steve,
Thanks for reporting this.
Our position on this is recommending to NOT upgrade

More info here:
https://servoy.com/macos-big-sur-issues

Best,
Sean

Hi all,

I’m still on Catalina. We are about 10 months on from these posts and 2-3 servoy releases have come out since then.
Mac OS X Monterey is looming on the horizon.

What is current status?

Which versions of Servoy run on Mac OS X Big Sur?
Are there any that run on M1 Macs?

swingman:
What is current status?

Good questions Christian
I happened to be playing around with a VM of Big Sur (Intel) a couple of days ago just to see if the latest Release Candidate of Servoy worked on it, so I installed it from the ‘all in one’ download, ran it and all seemed to be fine.
Then I saw there was an update to Big Sur from Apple, so I installed that, but then when I came to run Servoy, it didn’t launch, saying something like a permission error (should have taken a screen shot, doh!) and then the crash dialog appeared. I had to delete it and then drag over the RC app again, but this will not be ideal in future if an OS update causes a currently installed version of Servoy to stop working, especially if you have made changes inside ‘package’ of app to update properties files and/or adding plug-ins etc.!
I hope Servoy guys can make sure to test things like this on a Mac…

And I too am VERY keen to know that there will be a properly working, maybe even native, Servoy for M1 (I know you rely on other packages like Java & Eclipse, but I think there are now versions of Java that have been released for M1…)

Thanks
Rafi

We will try to look at creating an M1 variant for 2021.12. but there are a lot of native binaries that we need then.

No idea what goes wrong with if you install an update of big sur that breaks your installation.
Create a bug report at Apple, they break your system.

Hi,

Im currently running Servoy (2021.06 & 2021.09) on my M1 machine, and it works good.
But i have changed the java version, when running with the default java version that is shipped with Servoy the M1 is doing strange things.
But when running on JDK 11 it works for me, maybe you could try that.

You can update the version of java by updating the path (path to libjli.dylib) in the servoy.ini file.

Hi Johan,

jcompagner:
We will try to look at creating an M1 variant for 2021.12. but there are a lot of native binaries that we need then.

maybe you can see 'rvanveen’s post as a start for what you might need?

No idea what goes wrong with if you install an update of big sur that breaks your installation.
Create a bug report at Apple, they break your system.

I might do that if I can reproduce it and get the correct error dialogs etc. captured…

Hi ‘rvanveen’,

rvanveen:
Im currently running Servoy (2021.06 & 2021.09) on my M1 machine, and it works good.
But i have changed the java version, when running with the default java version that is shipped with Servoy the M1 is doing strange things.
But when running on JDK 11 it works for me, maybe you could try that.
You can update the version of java by updating the path (path to libjli.dylib) in the servoy.ini file.

That’s great to hear that it’s working well for you on M1 (I’m now waiting for Apple to announce the (hopefully) new 16" (& 14"?) MacBook Pros that hopefully have M1X (or whatever) chip in them before I switch to M1 based Mac (& also a solution to running Windows in a VM… I did get 11 Preview version working on Parallels when I was trying out an M1 MBAir [which I returned within returns window due to how Servoy worked])
If/when, I will try what you suggest, unless Johan has managed to work it all out & there is a proper Servoy release with Universal binaries of Eclipse & Java ;-)

Thanks all

rafig:
Hi Johan,

jcompagner:
We will try to look at creating an M1 variant for 2021.12. but there are a lot of native binaries that we need then.

maybe you can see 'rvanveen’s post as a start for what you might need?

no because that is just x86 java not native Aarch64

Rene uses a JRE11_x86 instead of the JRE16_x86 that we ship by default, for some reason that works better when emulated on Aarch64

But Java17 is out and that’s a LTS so i plan to stick to that version also for our normal releases from now on.
And i hope there a a good native Aarch64 for that and/or the 17_x86 also works better on Aarch64

jcompagner:
no because that is just x86 java not native Aarch64
Rene uses a JRE11_x86 instead of the JRE16_x86 that we ship by default, for some reason that works better when emulated on Aarch64
But Java17 is out and that’s a LTS so i plan to stick to that version also for our normal releases from now on.
And i hope there a a good native Aarch64 for that and/or the 17_x86 also works better on Aarch64

Thanks Johan for whatever you can do that might make it work better on M1/Big Sur ;-)

My previous generation 15" MacBook Pro with touchbar was running fine on BigSur. However recently I was forced to buy a new MacBook Pro with M1 chip (don’t ask ;-)). I managed to get it working but it was randomly crashing at unexpected moments. So I decided to take Rene’s advice (which Marc Boegem pointed me to, thanks Marc) and use JDK 11. It’s a pretty straightforward process but if you don’t know where to look it can take longer than it should so to make it a bit easier for anybody that still has to take this route here are the steps I took:

  • Make a backup of your Servoy.app and your Workspace(s)
  • Download JDK 11.0.2 from Archived OpenJDK GA Releases or use the following link: (https://download.java.net/java/GA/jdk11/9/GPL/openjdk-11.0.2_osx-x64_bin.tar.gz). Make sure it is legit.
  • Unzip it and place the jdk-11.0.2.jdk folder in your preferred location (I just put it in my Users/ folder)
  • Right click your Servoy.app and choose Show Package Contents
  • Locate the servoy.ini (note: the wiki points to the wrong location, maybe somebody can change that?) It is in the Contents/Eclipse/ folder.
  • Edit it and at the -vm tag change the location to where you put the JDK, in my case /Users/omar/jdk-11.0.2.jdk/Contents/Home/lib/jli/libjli.dylib
  • After saving start Servoy, it will probably tell you that it can’t start because the JDK is from an untrusted source
  • Go to your Mac’s system preferences and open the Security and Privacy dialog
  • It will show that it blocked JDK 11 with a button next to it that will allow using it on your Mac
  • Now it should work, you can check if it is running the correct Java version from your Servoy Admin window

Hope this helps, grtz.

Thank you for sharing this. I will try if I can get my M1 MacBook back from my children – it has become their school computer since I could not use it for Servoy ;-)

My pleasure, Servoy (or rather Java 11) is now very stable in my case. Tip: while your at it increase the RAM (in servoy.ini) if you haven’t done so. And not only for the -Xmx but also for the -Xms. For starters I would recommend -Xms2G and -Xms4G on a MacBook with 8Gb and double that on a 16Gb/32Gb. It starts faster and runs much smoother than with the default settings.

Not sure where to post this one, but I’m now getting a ‘build error’ on my M1 Mac with various (x86-64) Java versions (in Version: 2021.3.0.3642)

An internal error occurred during: “Building”.
Invalid index

I have tried downloading lots of different Java JDKs & changing the servoy.ini file to point to them, as I’m pretty sure it is some combination of Java & M1 causing the problem… [I rebooted my old Intel Mac with same Servoy & workspace, & build/clean went fine)
With some versions of JDK (just tried jdk-16.jdk), the Solution Explorer doesn’t even display… (& with some, it says ‘Building Workspace’ not just ‘Building’)

It’s quite a big solution, but I did bump up the memory in the vmargs
(Not sure if Omar has any more helpful advice as he seems to be using Servoy (which version??) with the OpenJDK 11 Java he linked, so maybe I’ve missed something?
:?
Thanks

Hi Rafig,

Sorry for not replying sooner but I was down with Covid ;-) I am using the latest Servoy version, I have NG projects and 1 Smart Client project. I would recommend using the mentioned Java version, it works very well for me. Next I would recommend starting a new very basic project and see if that will work correctly. If it does, add your database connections and rebuild your project from the ground up and see if it at any point you get a build error.

Hi Omar,
thanks for your reply.
I was able to update the Servoy that was having build errors to the latest release & it seems to be working fine now (& building ok) with the Java you linked to.
I’ll try to make sure I update all my client’s Servoy’s to the latest version.
All the best

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=23387

Hi Johan,

Native M1 installer, that’s great! Thanks I will check it out!

Looking good. (finally!) very snappy on M1 :)
Also nice to see that Eclipse itself is more than half (!) smaller then it was in 2021.06

Thank you Johan!!!
M1 works great & is super fast!
All Mac Servoy developers now need to update to Macs with M1 chips ;-)
Thanks
Rafi