With the introduction of macOS 10.14 some time ago, Apple has unfortunately discontinued support for the old Mac Mini that I used for maintaining the Mac port. This means I am no longer able to test Panda3D on macOS, get personal experience with changes in macOS that affect Panda3D, or iterate on changes to the Mac port.
Apple unfortunately has a particularly strong habit of frequently deprecating and removing features that applications rely on, which makes the maintenance cost of supporting macOS high. In line with this tradition, the new 10.15 release of macOS has made changes that block the Panda3D SDK from being installed. Due to the aforementioned, I am not able to investigate or address this issue, so we are entirely reliant on random contributions from the community for the problem to be fixed.
Therefore, I’d like to ask if you or someone you know is interested in helping out with macOS maintenance. Things that need to be taken care of include:
- Ensure that Panda is tested on the latest version of macOS when it becomes available
- Ensure that that bugs relating to macOS are addressed on a timely basis
- Ensure features added to other platforms in Panda are ported to macOS
- Upgrade code to use a newer API when Apple deprecates one used by Panda
- Maintain aspects of the build system that affect macOS specifically.
Some examples of qualities we’d especially appreciate having:
- Frequent user of macOS
- Familiar with working with Apple APIs
- Comfortable with C++ and has a cursory understanding of Objective-C
- Some experience with Panda3D and understanding of its architecture
- Takes a fastidious approach to ensure that code changes do not break existing behaviours
- Experience working with Git, PRs, continuous integration
- Spare time to contribute occasionally towards Panda.
We’d greatly appreciate any help, so please contact me if you’re willing to help out.
If nobody else is available, I may be able to obtain another Mac and continue to do this myself. If at all possible, however, I would prefer for someone else to do it; I do not use macOS on a regular basis, and my time may be better spent working on other parts of the engine.