I want to port my Windows game on Mac and Linux- any advice?

Does anyone know a way to port to Mac or Linux? I am aware of Virtual Machines, do I use them- or is there an easier/more efficient way?

Thank you.

You can build for Mac and Linux on Windows assuming you’ve downloaded the relevant modules.

My PC won’t let me, for some very weird reason- at least for Mac. Something about it not being validated? The other two seem to just remain on the validating phase and do nothing else, aside from keeping Unity busy for hours…

For macOS the easiest and most efficient way is to have official hardware since you will need to be able to run the latest release of Xcode to publish to the App Store.

For Linux your options are more varied but you still want to run it on actual hardware. If you don’t want to invest in a separate machine you can just install to an external drive and boot off of that instead of the drive in your computer.

Doesn’t Windows already have something in it that runs things for Linux? I would need to get a Distro, but…

Also, is a Mini Mac enough for such a thing?

I’m assuming you’re referring to WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)? You might be able to get it working but my understanding is that it’s a translation layer (translating Linux kernel calls into Windows kernel calls) and that you might run into unusual situations that don’t exist on Linux.

I tried searching to see if there was any information on it and all I found were people reporting problems with it.

Yes. I’m currently using an M1 MacMini (16GB RAM/1TB SSD) for primarily iOS but I have tested macOS builds too. It is considerably slower than a powerful PC (eg my 5950X is a few times faster) but as long as you don’t buy the 8GB model it’s good enough for making builds.

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It’s also a little clunky, to the point where you’d be better off dual booting or using a VM.

Sounds like an issue with your PC that needs fixing. Can’t say why though, perhaps your Windows is out of date or has become unsupported.

It’s a Win 10, idk, are they no longer supported?

Win10 should be good for a while yet. Weird that it refuses to validate a module, though. I’ve never come across such issue personally.

Have you tried reinstalling the Hub?

Not yet, will try, tho. Do certain Unity versions have trouble with porting games? Just curious.

You might try downloading and installing the module by hand rather than through the hub. Unity release notes typically have all of the links.

Oh my gosh. I just downloaded them successfully! Now I’m running into a build error:

Exception occurred inside BeeDriver: System.IO.IOException: The process cannot access the file ‘C:\Users\nerdm\Documents\UnityGames\Cow_Defender\Library\Bee\tundra.log.json’ because it is being used by another process.
at System.IO.FileSystem.DeleteFile (System.String fullPath) [0x0001a] in :0

First time trying to make a game with Mac, so I have no idea what it means?

Also the script compilation is being ignored by some things.