On Thu, 26 Nov 2020 at 16:26, Keith McKay wrote:
I was planning on getting the new entry level MAC min M1 with 8GB unified memory but I see that there will be no ConTeXt binaries for these new M1 chip Macs.
It's not that there will not be, it's just that none of us has purchased a piece of hardware yet. A few months back it was possible to purchase one, but: - it was just a one year rental fee rather than the ability to purchase it - definitely not available in my country - one had to enrol to the payed developer program - and then do a bunch of other bureaucracy (get some special business number etc.) - and it wasn't even guaranteed that you would get a device at the end I was contemplating what to do this time around since 8 GB of memory is not even sufficient to run a web browser, and the TeX Live hardly fits on their drive :), but it should do the job purely as a build machine. (Not that they have "none in stock", but I could smuggle one from elsewhere as long as the postal services keep running ...)
Would it be possible for a ConTeXt user like myself to build the binaries on my proposed new Mac? I'm not a computer professional.
There are three options: - the existing Intel binaries should work just fine - yes, you should be able to compile the binaries yourself - we should eventually get hold of one device for our build farm, or in the meantime just ask someone for the initial build which should keep you covered for a while Discussing when TeX Live will be available for arm is "out of context". We should get those binaries working before TL 2021. Mojca