macOS 12 unsupported? #5603

Jmuccigr · 2024-09-14T17:10:16Z

Jmuccigr
Sep 14, 2024

Output of `brew config`

HOMEBREW_VERSION: 4.3.21
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: c5d09b411776547bdbc8e0435deaf690ca632413
Last commit: 2 days ago
Core tap JSON: 14 Sep 16:47 UTC
Core cask tap JSON: 14 Sep 16:47 UTC
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /opt/homebrew
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_DISPLAY: /private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.fOSSlSBvMl/org.xquartz:0
HOMEBREW_EDITOR: nano
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 8
Homebrew Ruby: 3.3.4 => /opt/homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/3.3.4_1/bin/ruby
CPU: octa-core 64-bit arm_blizzard_avalanche
Clang: 14.0.0 build 1400
Git: 2.37.1 => /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/git
Curl: 7.79.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 12.4-arm64
CLT: 14.2.0.0.1.1668646533
Xcode: N/A
Rosetta 2: false

Output of `brew doctor`

Warning: Some installed formulae are deprecated or disabled.
You should find replacements for the following formulae:
  gpm
  openssl@1.1
  python-lxml
  youtube-dl

Warning: Unbrewed dylibs were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected dylibs:
  /usr/local/lib/libcrfpp.0.dylib
  /usr/local/lib/libtcl8.6.dylib
  /usr/local/lib/libtk8.6.dylib
  /usr/local/lib/libusb-0.1.4.4.4.dylib
  /usr/local/lib/libusbpp-0.1.4.4.4.dylib
  /usr/local/lib/libwkhtmltox.0.12.6.dylib

Warning: Unbrewed header files were found in /usr/local/include.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected header files:
  /usr/local/include/EAI_C.h
  /usr/local/include/EAIheaders.h
  /usr/local/include/GeneratedHeaders.h
  /usr/local/include/X3DNode.h
  /usr/local/include/crfpp.h
  /usr/local/include/fakemysql.h
  /usr/local/include/fakepq.h
  /usr/local/include/fakesql.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/PfEd.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/autowidth.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/baseviews.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/basics.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/bezctx_ff.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/bitmapcontrol.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/chardata.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/charset.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/config.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/configure-pfaedit.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/dynamic.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/edgelist.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/edgelist2.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/encoding.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/fffreetype.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/ffpython.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/fileutil.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/fontforgevw.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/fvmetrics.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/gdraw.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/gfile.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/ggadget.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/gicons.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/gimage.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/gio.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/gkeysym.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/gprogress.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/gresource.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/groups.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/gwidget.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/gwwiconv.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/import.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/intl.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/libffstamp.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/lookups.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/mm.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/nonlineartrans.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/ofl.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/pfaedit.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/plugins.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/print.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/psfont.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/savefont.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/scriptfuncs.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/scripting.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/sd.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/search.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/sfd1.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/sflayoutP.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/splinefont.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/stemdb.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/ttf.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/ttfinstrs.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/uiinterface.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/unicoderange.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/ustring.h
  /usr/local/include/fontforge/utype.h
  /usr/local/include/itcl.h
  /usr/local/include/itcl2TclOO.h
  /usr/local/include/itclDecls.h
  /usr/local/include/itclInt.h
  /usr/local/include/itclIntDecls.h
  /usr/local/include/itclMigrate2TclCore.h
  /usr/local/include/itclTclIntStubsFcn.h
  /usr/local/include/mysqlStubs.h
  /usr/local/include/odbcStubs.h
  /usr/local/include/pqStubs.h
  /usr/local/include/python3.9/greenlet/greenlet.h
  /usr/local/include/sandbox/private.h
  /usr/local/include/tcl.h
  /usr/local/include/tclDecls.h
  /usr/local/include/tclOO.h
  /usr/local/include/tclOODecls.h
  /usr/local/include/tclPlatDecls.h
  /usr/local/include/tclThread.h
  /usr/local/include/tclTomMath.h
  /usr/local/include/tclTomMathDecls.h
  /usr/local/include/tdbc.h
  /usr/local/include/tdbcDecls.h
  /usr/local/include/tdbcInt.h
  /usr/local/include/tk.h
  /usr/local/include/tkDecls.h
  /usr/local/include/tkPlatDecls.h
  /usr/local/include/usb.h
  /usr/local/include/usbpp.h
  /usr/local/include/wkhtmltox/image.h
  /usr/local/include/wkhtmltox/pdf.h

Warning: Unbrewed '.la' files were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected '.la' files:
  /usr/local/lib/libcrfpp.la

Warning: Unbrewed '.pc' files were found in /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected '.pc' files:
  /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/tcl.pc
  /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/tk.pc

Warning: Unbrewed static libraries were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected static libraries:
  /usr/local/lib/libcrfpp.a
  /usr/local/lib/libtclstub8.6.a
  /usr/local/lib/libtkstub8.6.a

Warning: You have unlinked kegs in your Cellar.
Leaving kegs unlinked can lead to build-trouble and cause formulae that depend on
those kegs to fail to run properly once built. Run `brew link` on these:
  python-packaging
  pycparser
  cryptography
  pybind11
  cffi
  numpy
  python-lxml
  meson
  pillow
  certifi

Warning: You are using macOS 12.
We (and Apple) do not provide support for this old version.
It is expected behaviour that some formulae will fail to build in this old version.
It is expected behaviour that Homebrew will be buggy and slow.
Do not create any issues about this on Homebrew's GitHub repositories.
Do not create any issues even if you think this message is unrelated.
Any opened issues will be immediately closed without response.
Do not ask for help from Homebrew or its maintainers on social media.
You may ask for help in Homebrew's discussions but are unlikely to receive a response.
Try to figure out the problem yourself and submit a fix as a pull request.
We will review it but may or may not accept it.

Description of issue

Just doing a routine update and got this message:

Warning: You are using macOS 12.
We (and Apple) do not provide support for this old version.

I don't believe that 12 (I'm on Monterey = 12.4) is no longer supported by apple. Is this correct information?

Answered by Bo98

Sep 14, 2024

The current latest macOS 12.x version, 12.7.6, is expected to be the last update for Monterey. macOS 15 releases on Monday alongside macOS 13.7 and macOS 14.7 and Apple support only 3 macOS versions at a time (so 13, 14 & 15).

We too only have CI testing resources to support 3 macOS versions. We've reallocated our macOS 12 CI to be macOS 15 yesterday.

View full answer

Bo98 · 2024-09-14T17:22:47Z

Bo98
Sep 14, 2024
Maintainer

The current latest macOS 12.x version, 12.7.6, is expected to be the last update for Monterey. macOS 15 releases on Monday alongside macOS 13.7 and macOS 14.7 and Apple support only 3 macOS versions at a time (so 13, 14 & 15).

We too only have CI testing resources to support 3 macOS versions. We've reallocated our macOS 12 CI to be macOS 15 yesterday.

19 replies

carlocab Oct 4, 2024

Can you point to announcements they've made in the past about dropping support? When and where did they announce that Big Sur was no longer supported?

p-linnane Oct 4, 2024
Maintainer

Apple doesn't make announcements about dropping support. They just stop shipping updates. As @Bo98 said: Apple's policy on this has been consistent for the last 12 years. You'll notice that when macOS 15 was released we also received macOS 14.7 and macOS 13.7. If Apple was going to change their policy then we should've seen a Monterey update.

There is no point in arguing this. We only support the 3 latest releases of macOS.

trinitronx Oct 7, 2024

There is no point in arguing this. We only support the 3 latest releases of macOS.

Kinda disappointing that dropping bottle download support also for Monterey & older macOS releases has the effect of codifying Apple's Planned Obsolescence into this Open Source project. Of course, it's understandable that everyone has limited time and even GitHub Actions runners eventually drop "support" for old macOS releases. However, dropping "support" from a maintainer's or developer's perspective can be a different and orthogonal concept to dropping "support" through pre-built old bottled versions.

The maintenance burden to support old macOS versions via pre-bottled software would be much lower and have trivial impact when compared to dropping "support" for compiling everything from scratch & following Homebrew development from latest master from a developer perspective.

In other words: The concept of "support" can be decoupled into at least three separate concepts:

"Support" as in "can the tool install things on old macOS"?
"Support" as in "does the tool provide latest software development tooling (brew, Casks, Formula) on old macOS"?
"Support" as in "does the Open Source Community support this tool in general on old macOS"?

For concept number 1, this could be trivially done by locking the Homebrew repos + Taps to a specific last known git commit hash, disabling auto update (HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1), and keeping the old bottles around for users to download for a longer term. Of course, with the usual disclaimers & warnings that "You are on your own", and not to expect "support" as defined in concept 2 from developers & Homebrew maintainers. Community support as in concept 3 can still co-exist with both concepts 1 and 2, depending on the degree of expertise within the community, and their willingness to help each other to keep things working on old macOS versions.

In the case of conflating concepts 1 & 2 together, it creates an unintended scenario for users, as described below:

There currently exists an unfortunate tragedy of the commons type of scenario given that users will eventually always end up stuck on old macOS releases due to old Apple hardware which gets locked to some macOS release (e.g. Monterey or below). As a result, even trying to use old hardware becomes unsustainable when every Homebrew install eventually becomes a compile rather than simple archived binary bottle install. Apple of course wins yet again, laughing all the way to the bank. Meanwhile, we end up with old hardware using much more energy + CPU cycles for each user to compile all the software every time for each and every user. Also, eventually due to the same issue this hardware becomes unusable with Homebrew-packaged software prematurely before its actual physical breakdown, thus becoming e-Waste. In the grand scheme of things, this pattern of planned obsolescence is arguably unsustainable from a civilization-level and also energy & ecological perspective. So, it's rather unfortunate to see Homebrew dropping the binary pre-packaged bottles for old releases so soon, resulting in the above scenario which we observe at present with Monterey.

Bo98 Oct 7, 2024
Maintainer

To be clear: we have not gone and deleted all macOS 12 existing bottles (4.7k formulae still have macOS 12 bottles). We're just not building new bottles for new versions anymore. We do not have the CI infrastructure to support four OS versions - the moment of transition was when macOS 15 bottles started being built instead. It's not a grand climate change conspiracy like you think it is.

Of course in the ideal world of infinite resources we would build bottles for every macOS possible, but that world unfortunately doesn't exist. We already try our best to support the build-from-source path all the way back to 10.11 El Capitan rather than hard cutting off support entirely. Although build from source is indeed slow and not great and we do not test it in CI (which is why we say it's unsupported), we do accept community contributions to fix any problems that people face while on this path.

You can, as you say, choose to freeze the version list at the point macOS 12 bottles stopped being built if you do not wish to install newer versions. Such decision is up to individual users.

trinitronx Oct 8, 2024

It's not a grand climate change conspiracy like you think it is.

Seems that some other connotations are being supplanted or rather "reading too much into" what I was trying to say.¹

To be clear: I'm merely trying to shine some light on the reasons why the community might desire "support" as in "can the tool install things on old macOS" via pre-built bottles + Homebrew (frozen at some point in time or otherwise). I figured it was worth pointing out and discussing what could be done in order to provide a more sustainable and lasting approach towards old hardware, rather than going along with Apple's planned obsolescence timeline.

Although build from source is indeed slow and not great and we do not test it in CI (which is why we say it's unsupported), we do accept community contributions to fix any problems that people face while on this path.

Quite understandable, and indeed the availability of GitHub Actions' CI/CD Runners does impact what is possible given their timeline and Apple's timeline. It's always good to set expectations about this and what users can expect to be "supported" as in the meaning "do the maintainers use/test/build on this old macOS?"

It's good to know that community contributions can still be accepted and help in this area. 👍

You can, as you say, choose to freeze the version list at the point macOS 12 bottles stopped being built if you do not wish to install newer versions. Such decision is up to individual users.

Yes, I'll probably experiment with this at some point. I think the current scenario that I'm observing is due to Homebrew's auto-update happening while coinciding with the change from building new bottles for latest available (and supported on my old Early-2015 MacBook), macOS Monterey 12.7.6. It caught me a bit by surprise that Homebrew started showing the warnings:

Warning: You are using macOS 12.
We (and Apple) do not provide support for this old version.
[...SNIP...]

Seems that some others were caught off-guard also, but at least I knew what it meant and observed the symptoms of everything newly installed starting to be built from source (very slowly on the old MacBook).

The idea of "tragedy of the commons" has more to do with an unfortunate result of the decisions of many independent actors when seen from a collective viewpoint than some sort of "conspiracy". Meanwhile, the concept of a "conspiracy" has to do with a group of communicating co-conspirators all acting in tandem towards some goal. That's not what is happening here. The idea to be conveyed here is that the result of various disparate decisions can have a collective effect, often unintentional, on certain unforeseen outcomes. In other words, it's more like the idea of "Hanlon's Razor":
"Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system of interactions."
This also does not mean that Homebrew maintainers are to be seen as incompetent, but rather that we all make various rational decisions which can often have unintended side-effects that we did not foresee. ↩

CrazyBoy49z · 2024-10-04T19:28:43Z

CrazyBoy49z
Oct 4, 2024

https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/VENTURA-DROP.html

UPD: A1707(2016) Successfully updated to macOS Sequoia

1 reply

steveschow Nov 4, 2024

has homebrew just annihilated my monterey install or is it still safe to use now since I ran brew upgrade several times without knowing support had been dropped? If it's not safe to use, how can I roll back. if it is still safe to use the various things that were installed by homebrew, that is good news, but how can I freeze it to make sure it will not try to overwrite my stuff again?

Right now I am of the impression that running upgrade literally overwrote my homebrew installation with lots of imcompatible things. if that is not the case, then I will sigh a big relief, but its not clear to me what just happened. Feels like the rug has been pulled out from under me. I understand I'm a dumb naive user and doesn't understand the details, please help me make sure my homebrew installed apps are still safe to use. otherwise I guess I have to remove it all and switch to something else? or is there a way to remove it all and then reinstall it with some flags set so that it will only install the latest known good versions of most things? It's not at all clear what I am supposed to do at this point to ensure these various software continue to function.

the current upgrade procedure is indeed taking a VERY long time to go...I guess its recompiling things from scratch or something, which i don't have a problem with if it will produce good results, but if its overwriting my installs with incompapatible things..that's a problem

probably I would prefer to have it setup so that it will download any install any frozen binaries as they exist but NOT try to recompile new source.. how do I configure it so that I could theoretically reinstall everything get all the binaries that are still available..and not try to recompile new sources which may or may not be compatible or I may or may not be able to even compile?

steveschow · 2024-11-04T00:19:17Z

steveschow
Nov 4, 2024

whatever homebrew did in regard to dropping this support, it proceeded during upgrade, without asking; to install over the top of my monterey system all manner of allegedly potentially incompatible things (I think?)..which I can't even fix now since homebrew has dropped this version. I will definitely cease to use homebrew due to this policy and I'm extremely disappointed. homebrew team cannot be trusted. congradulations

1 reply

carlocab Nov 4, 2024

It always puzzles me how people are often so quick to call decisions stupid, before stopping to consider whether the people making the said decision know some things that they (the person calling a decision stupid) don't. (Spoiler alert: we do.)

Dropping support for Monterey is an engineering decision motivated by having limited resources. We don't have the resources to support Monterey in addition to the current versions we already support. We wish that weren't the case, but that's the reality. Call it stupid if you wish; reality doesn't really care.

steveschow · 2024-11-04T00:31:22Z

steveschow
Nov 4, 2024

so I didn't know about this change and came back and saw a very long and slow homebrew upgrade running which I killed, but only then saw the message about Monterey having been dropped. what exactly happened. did it install stuff that is not compatible>? What is the best way to roll back to whatever is last known good version for monterey and freeze it there?

6 replies

steveschow Nov 4, 2024

Upgrading my still very capable 5,1 is not possible, Monterey is the end of the road. I will possibly switch to macports as they appear to be more supportive of older os. I don't really want to as I find homebrew superior in many other ways.

I can completely understand actually that homebrew doesn't want to build and store bottles going back forever. I just need to know it's not installing broken stuff. I don't even mind if it takes long to compile it here and also don't need to be using the very latest version of every single utility. The warning messages being sent to me now make it sound like I am taking my life into my own hands by continuing to use homebrew on my still very relevant 5,1 macpro which is upgraded as far as it can be upgraded. But if it's just that it may have a problem compiling something at some point and can't upgrade that particular thing and doesn't erase the previous version in the process or install any other incompatible binaries then I am actually quite fine with it.

I think 3 years is too short though. Apple has a bad rep for cutting off support after three years and I have to say the same for homebrew now. It has many other great positives but many people are at least a year or two behind the latest macOS release simply because Apple keeps breaking things in their newest release every year. There are numerous reasons for running behind Apple's update schedule and many people are still using perfectly good intel hardware like my maxed out 12 core 3.46ghz 5,1 pro that still performs very well and no reason to stop using it or buy a new Mac. Apple does this to push more Mac sales but not all of us fall for that and it's rather unfortunate that homebrew is stepping in line with Apple on that point. But I also understand it's difficult to build and store binaries going back very far so it is what it is.

p-linnane Nov 4, 2024
Maintainer

It's less of what we "want" to do, and more of the realities of package management. We do not have the CI resources or maintainer interest to invest in older macOS versions that have increasingly fewer users.

This is also not the right place to litigate your complaints about how Apple operates. We are focused on the sustainability and health of Homebrew, and want it to be available for years to come. For us, that means supporting versions of macOS that receive active security support from Apple.

Support for Intel macOS will probably end within the next few years, so our focus has shifted, and I cannot recommend you stay on an unsupported OS because you find the hardware to be "perfectly good".

carlocab Nov 4, 2024

I think 3 years is too short though. Apple has a bad rep for cutting off support after three years and I have to say the same for homebrew now.

Neither Apple nor Homebrew cut off support after three years. Both Apple and Homebrew support the latest three versions of macOS. These are not the same.

To see this, note that macOS Ventura, the oldest supported OS, runs on at least some Macs introduced in 2017. This means that there are about 7 to 8 years of support for any given OS.

steveschow Nov 4, 2024

If you don't want to litigate then why do you throw out a last criticism and lecture about using perfectly good hardware and perfectly good macOS version? Macports looks better and better with that kind of attitude coming from you. Good luck with homebrew

p-linnane Nov 4, 2024
Maintainer

If you don't want to litigate then why do you throw out a last criticism and lecture about using perfectly good hardware and perfectly good macOS version? Macports looks better and better with that kind of attitude coming from you. Good luck with homebrew

I'm sorry if it came across as insincere, but I genuinely am hoping to impress on you that this is a bigger issue than Homebrew. It's neither criticism nor a lecture; it's a sincere hope that you will not stay on macOS Monterey simply because it runs on the hardware. Every year that goes by will result in fewer and fewer applications supporting Monterey, and security issues piling up with 0 chance of a fix. Rather than switching package managers because your system is too old, wouldn't it be better to try and address that underlying issue instead?

Just hoping to inject a bit of a security perspective into the situation. MacPorts is a great project, and I hope it works well for your use case.

p-linnane · 2024-11-06T15:07:01Z

p-linnane Nov 6, 2024
Maintainer

As stated above: this is not the place to complain or argue about Apple's policies. This thread is about macOS 12 Monterey support.

zdjtsxy · 2024-11-06T13:54:51Z

zdjtsxy
Nov 6, 2024

/usr/bin/sudo /usr/sbin/chown -R zhaodongjian:admin /opt/homebrew
==> Downloading and installing Homebrew...
fatal: expected 'acknowledgments'
Failed during: /usr/bin/git fetch --quiet --progress --force origin

please,what problem is it?i am macos 12.7.6，i hope bro can help me

1 reply

zdjtsxy Nov 6, 2024

Has everyone encountered this situation?

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macOS 12 unsupported? #5603

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macOS 12 unsupported? #5603

Output of brew config

Output of brew doctor

Description of issue

Replies: 6 comments · 29 replies

Bo98 Sep 14, 2024 Maintainer

p-linnane Oct 4, 2024 Maintainer

Bo98 Oct 7, 2024 Maintainer

Footnotes

p-linnane Nov 4, 2024 Maintainer

p-linnane Nov 4, 2024 Maintainer

This comment was marked as off-topic.

p-linnane Nov 6, 2024 Maintainer

Output of `brew config`

Output of `brew doctor`

Replies: 6 comments 29 replies

Bo98
Sep 14, 2024
Maintainer

p-linnane Oct 4, 2024
Maintainer

Bo98 Oct 7, 2024
Maintainer

p-linnane Nov 4, 2024
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p-linnane Nov 4, 2024
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p-linnane Nov 6, 2024
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