Apple Silicon Desktop Support

[aarongrider]

Summary

This is an updated version of @colinbendell's PR here + build fixes and package.json changes: #3120

Apple Silicon Mac's do not run Flipper natively, instead using Rosetta to emulate.

The Electron builder only produces x86_64 builds and the PortForwardingApp is precompiled and committed in the code base with an x64 build.

This PR adds universal building of the electron app and the PortForwardingMacApp.

Addresses:

• Discussion: Apple Silicon Desktop Client Support #3073
• Question: Any timeline for native apple silicon support ? #2169
• Discussion: Apple silicon support #2193
• Failed to compile Flipper Desktop for M1 #2898

Changelog

• Enable universal mac (x64/arm64) builds

Test Plan

• yarn build --mac
• Run flipper.app
• Verify the app runs and that the kind is Apple in Activity Monitor

[umangloria]

Someone please check this PR and get it merged, Waiting for official universal builds for mac.
Also, Just tried a new build from PR and it seems working super speedy.

[andreialecu]

I believe this was blocked by this issue: #2606 (comment) as per @mweststrate

However, it seems that a fix just landed upstream in Electron:
electron/electron#33337

So hopefully this can be resolved soon. Flipper is very unpleasant to use on M1 macs right now.

[mweststrate]

Yeah that is definitely good news! We'll wait for the stable release and proceed from there. Note that the whole issue can be avoided btw if you run the Flipper browser version: npx flipper-browser. We're still working on that one, so hasn't been officially announced, but should be quite feature complete at this point :)

[umangloria]

Can someone please revise this PR?

[obsantos]

@passy Do we have an ETA on this? My mac reports Flipper as high battery consumer and its probably related to simulation/rosetta. This change would be much appreciated!

[cristiandan]

Any luck with this guys? Would help a lot M1 based macs

[aarongrider]

Another ping on this. Please let me know if there are any changes needed.

[kelset]

I think pinging @lblasa might be the right way :)

[mweststrate]

We'll have hackathon in a couple of weeks at we will take a new attempt :) For the adventurous; we have experimental npx flipper-server that you can use to run Flipper from the browser, and doesn't suffer from the Electron limitations as it runs on node.js.

[coveralls]

Pull Request Test Coverage Report for Build 3014555494

• 0 of 0 changed or added relevant lines in 0 files are covered.
• No unchanged relevant lines lost coverage.
• Overall coverage decreased (-0.03%) to 49.948%

---

Totals
Change from base Build 3014440859:	-0.03%
Covered Lines:	7826
Relevant Lines:	14219

---

💛 - Coveralls

[lblasa]

Apple Silicon support has been on my list for a while now. As @mweststrate mentioned, we have a hackathon in a couple of weeks in which we can definitely try and make this happen :)

[andreialecu]

We'll have hackathon in a couple of weeks at we will take a new attempt :) For the adventurous; we have experimental npx flipper-server that you can use to run Flipper from the browser, and doesn't suffer from the Electron limitations as it runs on node.js.

Hey @mweststrate I tried flipper-server but ran into:

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/usr/local/bin/idb_companion'

The right location is:

➜ which idb_companion
/opt/homebrew/bin/idb_companion

I have idb_companion installed via homebrew. I ran ln -s /opt/homebrew/bin/idb_companion /usr/local/bin/idb_companion as a workaround and got past the error. Is there a separate repository for flipper-server where I can report this?

The page it opens isn't working though. Gets stuck on "Loading..." and there's this in the browser's console.

Relevant code (seems to try to access process in the browser):

[limal]

@aarongrider you're the man! Thank you so much. I was astonished to learn that there can be no official M1 builds in 2022.

I made a quick tutorial on how to run your fork for folks like me, i.e. using Apple machines as dev tools out of necessity and not that experienced with the Mac ecosystem.

https://dev.to/limal/speed-boost-to-flipper-debugger-on-apple-m1-1gh

[scarlac]

@lblasa What do we need to test/do to get this further along? Flipper performs quite poorly overall so M1 support would make a significant difference to the debugging experience and thus the overall RN experience.

[umangloria]

Hey @aarongrider I was using v145 (universal build from your repo). However after updating the code to latest one I am unable to create new build:
Getting this error:

Script termnated. Error: Expected all non-binary files to have identical SHAs when creating a universal build but "Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Resources/MainMenu.nib/keyedobjects-101300.nib" did not
    at exports.makeUniversalApp (/Users/umangloriya/Documents/flipper m1/desktop/node_modules/@electron/universal/src/index.ts:118:15)
    at runMicrotasks (<anonymous>)
    at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:96:5)
    at MacPackager.doPack (/Users/umangloriya/Documents/flipper m1/desktop/node_modules/app-builder-lib/src/macPackager.ts:125:9)
    at MacPackager.pack (/Users/umangloriya/Documents/flipper m1/desktop/node_modules/app-builder-lib/src/macPackager.ts:179:7)
    at Packager.doBuild (/Users/umangloriya/Documents/flipper m1/desktop/node_modules/app-builder-lib/src/packager.ts:441:9)
    at Object.executeFinally (/Users/umangloriya/Documents/flipper m1/desktop/node_modules/builder-util/src/promise.ts:12:14)
    at Packager._build (/Users/umangloriya/Documents/flipper m1/desktop/node_modules/app-builder-lib/src/packager.ts:376:31)
    at Packager.build (/Users/umangloriya/Documents/flipper m1/desktop/node_modules/app-builder-lib/src/packager.ts:337:12)
    at Object.executeFinally (/Users/umangloriya/Documents/flipper m1/desktop/node_modules/builder-util/src/promise.ts:12:14)
    at buildDist (/Users/umangloriya/Documents/flipper m1/desktop/scripts/build-release.tsx:270:5)
    at /Users/umangloriya/Documents/flipper m1/desktop/scripts/build-release.tsx:323:3
error Command failed with exit code 1.

Any suggestion or help will be appreciated !! thank you for this work

[Arkkeeper]

@umangloria you can add "@electron/universal": "1.3.0", to the resolutions section in flipper/desktop/package.json (and then yarn again, of course)

[facebook-github-bot]

@lblasa has imported this pull request. If you are a Meta employee, you can view this diff on Phabricator.

[lblasa]

I apologise for the delay on this one. I've just taken the changes locally and will review shortly.

[umangloria]

@lblasa Any update on this please?

[lblasa]

@lblasa Any update on this please?

This is currently in the pipeline. We are considering switching from PortForwardingMacApp to just use idb.

idb already has port forwarding and is a hard dependency for debugging apps on a device so it just makes sense to simplify our approach.

I will share an update as soon as there is one :)

[alexyangjie]

Could someone please push this forward? Debugging with Flipper is a pain in Apple Silicon macs. It is probably the slowest app on my mac right now, and is the only app that hasn't had any Apple Silicon native builds.

[chiragramani]

Hey @lblasa , can you help with the above please?
We see no frame drops with a universal binary and the performance is a lot better(than a Rosetta translated Flipper).

[chiragramani]

Created a GitHub workflow that cherry-picks the author's (@aarongrider) PR on every flipper releases with a minor patch(electron universal - 1.3.4). Repo: https://github.com/chiragramani/FlipperReleases and the releases section has the universal binary.

Hope this is helpful until Meta distributes a universal Flipper binary.

[umangloria]

Created a GitHub workflow that cherry-picks the author's (@aarongrider) PR on every flipper releases with a minor patch(electron universal - 1.3.4). Repo: https://github.com/chiragramani/FlipperReleases and the releases section has the universal binary.

Hope this is helpful until Meta distributes a universal Flipper binary.

Amazing work, It seems the repo is private, Could you please change it to public ?

[chiragramani]

Created a GitHub workflow that cherry-picks the author's (@aarongrider) PR on every flipper releases with a minor patch(electron universal - 1.3.4). Repo: https://github.com/chiragramani/FlipperReleases and the releases section has the universal binary.
Hope this is helpful until Meta distributes a universal Flipper binary.

Amazing work, It seems the repo is private, Could you please change it to public ?

Oh, thanks, made it public!

[markholland]

Any updates on this? I've been using the excellent repo provided by @chiragramani but builds have started failing for the second time in the last month or so and would love to see an official release.

[tconroy]

Hi @lblasa! Just wanted to +1 @markholland above, would love to better understand the state of official M1 support since the alt repos for arm64 binaries aren't working quite right.

You mentioned it was in the pipeline back in September 2022, so it's been over a year now. Any updates would be much appreciated! And thanks to you and all the other contributors for your hard work on Flipper! 🙏