disadvantages of Universal binary over the other mac formats

Hi,

Is there a disadvantage when using universal binaries compared to making a separate PPC and INTEL build ?

Is the universal build slower?

Can we easily detect which version should be used or is it a nowledge which the customer should have and therefore better to make it universal ?

It’s the same. When you have a downloadable product you can easily check on the website what platform the user is using and download the right build, thus reduce distribution size. But if you have a product on a CD it’s better to use universal binary as it’s easier for the end-user.

OK, so no speed penalty for doing it ? The universal binary just contains the 2 specific programs and it still runs as native code then ?

No speed penalty, only user simplicity.

Great, thanks

While there may be zero performance difference, I’ve found that my universal binary builds are significantly larger files than either PPC or Intel only builds. For instance, a PPC build that’s 20 megs might be a 40 meg universal binary. Is that normal?

Yes, because it has to include both an x86 build and a PPC build of the game engine. It zips down fairly well though, and assets aren’t duplicated. So if you had a huge game with masses of data, the Universal build is going to be only slightly larger (relatively).

–Eric

The “universal binary” in it’s essence is two applications (*) inside of what looks like one application. Your game’s data files are not duplicated, so the overhead is always fixed. And the size of this “unity overhead” can be reduced by checking “strip debug symbols” in the build.

(*) Though Unity games are always 32 bit right now, if there were 64 bit versions, then universal binary files can be like 4 applications inside (32 bit PPC, 32 bit Intel, 64 bit PPC, 64 bit Intel) on Leopard!

If this means that it will give me less need to give techsupport to another customer who accidentally bought the wrong version, then I can very well live with this.

Its only when you sell a lot of cd-roms that you realise how important it is to make your software as foolproof as possible.

You could offer this to your customers:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20404

I use it on everything. I find it to be pretty pitiful that almost every Installer will put universal binaries on your machine instead of just the portion you need.

Well, no, it’s entirely reasonable that PPC owners will get Intel machines eventually, and we would want to just copy our stuff over and continue to run as normal, instead of having to re-install everything. What EducaSoft said about keeping things as simple as possible is a good point.

–Eric

One definition of simple: backing up your data without having to worry about running out of hard disk space.

I have a 100 GB HD in my MacBook Pro, and I saved nearly 20 GB from getting rid of the PPC portion of things by running TrimTheFat on everything.

I would love to not have to worry about this, but that point in time isn’t here yet. Also, I don’t see how your argument works in reverse. Unity gives us a nice Intel/PPC/UB option. Why can’t Installer?

That’s fine if you know you’re not running in a mixed environment and have no intention of ever needing your stuff to run on a different architecture, but an installer has no way of knowing that. Which means you’d have to leave the decision up to the person doing the installing, and the large majority of people really have no idea about this sort of thing, which means a good chance of choosing the wrong option, which would lead to more problems all around (and more tech support calls).

As far as I know the PPC or Intel-only options in Unity are mostly intended for internal stuff, and I’d hope that nobody would use either of those options for something that’s going to be widely distributed. I’d say leave stuff like TrimTheFat to people such as yourself who actually know what they’re doing.

–Eric

I don’t see this as being very different from what you would currently find in the Customize section below, for any given app.

Don’t make such ridiculous assumptions! :smile:

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Fair enough; it could be a Customize option. Hardly any installers I’ve used have any options there…

–Eric