The future for Darktable

[Entropy512 (Andy Dodd)]

Forum bug on mobile? Because I explicitly linked a post by Aurelien. Is it not appearing for you?

[paperdigits (Mica)]

I see the link, but that’s not a quote. AP doesn’t do Mac development. There are no quotes in your post.

[Entropy512 (Andy Dodd)]

On desktop, a link quotes the post being linked.

[paperdigits (Mica)]

I know how the forum software works, you can stop being pedantic, thank you.

[betazoid (Anna)]

I think Mac and darktable is a serious issue.
There is vkdt, but I don’t know when that will have a feature set that is comparable to darktable, and even when it is usable, I just don’t see all darktable users suddently switching to vkdt.
If I see things correctly, users are flowing to darktable since some time in great numbers, especially younger users. I think it is meanwhile one of the most popular photography apps. And it is among the top 3 raw developers with Lightroom and C1. I think I know more darktable users than C1 users.
I don’t know. Maybe Mac users might switch to Linux?
Anyway, I think the Mac OS build should be maintained as long as possible.
How does darktable run on a fast Mac without a GPU? Maybe that’s possible?

Btw, I agree, the Windows build seems to work fine.

[richal]

@paperdigits

I know how the forum software works, you can stop being pedantic, thank you.

Seriously?

@Entropy512

it sounded like the person maintaining MacOS builds was getting really annoyed with Apple, so there is some element of truth to MacOS being at-risk:

And the actual “quote” of the article he “linked”:

There is one guy (Parafin) who single-handledly maintains Mac OS builds. It feels like he is getting more and more annoyed by Apple periodical backstabbing (no more OpenCL, use Metal. No more x86, use ARM. Etc.).

There is no plan to actively drive a migration. People are just tired of Mac OS discrepancies. If a Clang compilation can handle the cross-plateform oddities, well ok. If not, don’t expect miracles : motivation runs low.

Plus, darktable heavily relies on the Gtk stack, and its interactions with MacOS are already conflictual (font sizes, display color profiles, and that kind of thing).

[paperdigits (Mica)]

@richal

And the actual “quote” of the article he “linked”

So 3rd hand (now) information. Let’s stop. There is a Mac build. There are nightly Mac builds from members of the community here on the forum. The x86 build works. It runs under Rosetta on m1 hardware. It compiles on ARM (non-M1).

[hannoschwalm (Jens-Hanno Schwalm)]

I can’t speak for anyone supporting/developing osx or windows specific stuff within the darktable community. But - I have never heard of or read about any plans stopping support for those platforms.

There is just a bit of frustration. a) how apple does some things. BTW there has been a huge amount of work in dt about improving performance if no gpu is available! b) Also the dt community might be a very good place for people knowing osx or windows! Come on!

[afre (Alan)]

Support for M1 may be coming soon™ for the Linux kernel.

[Getondown]

For the longest while, a year or two, “Windozers” (including myself) have been on bended knee asking for help in fixing the bug preventing tethering from working on Windows computers. When you tether, the resulting file is always corrupted. I guess there aren’t enough Windows developers around.

[paperdigits (Mica)]

This isn’t the place for random complaints or bug reports. The original question has been answered.