change the min mac os x version required for node-gyp rebuild

[alexventuraio]

It fixes an issue when running npm install for a project with Node v6.11.5 and npm v3.10.10 on Mac OS X 10.4 Mojave and Xcode v9.4.1 || Xcode v10.0. It asks for the 'utility' file when running node-gyp rebuild.

Fixes: nodejs/node-gyp#1574

Checklist

• make -j4 test (UNIX), or vcbuild test (Windows) passes
• commit message follows commit guidelines

This solution was based on this fix from @yerassyl94.

[refack]

Rebased on v6.x

[refack]

@nodejs/lts This fixes issues with native addons.
macOS (which the majority of use is by far non server) 10.7 is de-facto EOL, with last update 10.7.5 at September 19, 2012. (AFAIK Apple doesn't have an explicit EOL policy)

[refack]

/CC @nodejs/platform-macos @nodejs/node-gyp @nodejs/addon-api

@gdams the point is to land this as semver-patch.

[richardlau]

For Node.js 6 PR's should target v6.x-staging instead of v6.x.

On a technical level, bumping MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET is semver-major and therefore I'm -1 on this for any currently supported releases (including 6). An argument could be made to bump it for Node.js 11 to 10.11 to match 9453240#diff-396d0b75211f5646b2fa730fbdf80a40
cc @nodejs/platform-macos

Addons can always override MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET in their own binding.gyp files. Neither the deployment target nor the v8.h file referenced in nodejs/node-gyp#1574 have been changed in years. Is it possible the issue is due to Mojave/Xcode?

[refack]

On a technical level, bumping MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET is semver-major

We have a blanket policy that we can drop support for EOL platforms mid stream.
This patch is to fix an extant issue with building native addons with node6 on macOS, so we might consider doing something special, but it's up for discussion 🤷‍♂️

[yerassyl94]

Xcode has been changed its C++ standar library from "libstdc++ (GNU C++ standard library)" to "libc++ (LLVM C++ standard library with C++11 support)".
This issue popped when I have updated my Mac to Mojave

[refack]

ping @ljharb?

[ljharb]

EOL or not (and as you said, Apple has no such policy, which makes it not EOL, which means this blanket policy doesn’t technically apply), it will likely break a lot of Mac users if this ships - hopefully it can wait for a semver major so it’s both a cleaner break, and so i can update nvm in advance of a release to be able to handle it.

[bnoordhuis]

Bumping MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET mid-cycle can end up breaking things. It's not something we can do without knowing what exactly it turns on or off.

An example from 2016: 204f3a8 bumped to 10.7, turned on PIE (position-independent executable), and broke the profiler on OS X because it didn't know about PIE slides.

For add-ons, there is a workaround: bnoordhuis/node-heapdump#120 (comment)

[refack]

@AlexVentura I'm going to close this. It seems like the stage in which we are in the life cycles of node6 isn't a good time to bump this variable.

FTR, possible workaround:

For users:

env CXXFLAGS="-mmacosx-version-min=10.9" npm install

For addon authors:

add this to your bindings.gyp (but as mentioned above test)

  'xcode_settings': {
    'MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET': '10.9',
  },

[alexventuraio]

@refack Got it! Thx to everyone for clarifying the topic a bit more.

[richardlau]

Xcode has been changed its C++ standar library from "libstdc++ (GNU C++ standard library)" to "libc++ (LLVM C++ standard library with C++11 support)".
This issue popped when I have updated my Mac to Mojave

This sounds familiar. We ran into libstdc++ vs libc++ issues on macOS for node-report (nodejs/node-report#22, nodejs/node-report#56). See nodejs/node-gyp#469 (comment) for why it might not be a good idea to change the MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET for addons for Node.js 6 if you are also not compiling Node.js from source (addons will end up linking against the other C++ library).

Node.js 8 and above specifies libc++:

node/common.gypi

Line 408 in 1519657

'CLANG_CXX_LIBRARY': 'libc++',

, overriding the default for the deployment target.

For add-ons, there is a workaround: bnoordhuis/node-heapdump#120 (comment)

Thanks. From that issue and the Xcode 10 release notes: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode_release_notes/xcode_10_release_notes

Building with libstdc++ was deprecated with Xcode 8 and is not supported in Xcode 10 when targeting iOS. C++ projects must now migrate to libc++ and are recommended to set a deployment target of macOS 10.9 or later, or iOS 7 or later. Besides changing the C++ Standard Library build setting, developers should audit hard-coded linker flags and target dependencies to remove references to libstdc++ (including -lstdc++, -lstdc++.6.0.9, libstdc++.6.0.9.tbd, and libstdc++.6.0.9.dylib). Project dependencies such as static archives that were built against libstdc++ will also need to be rebuilt against libc++. (40885260)

[cooperka]

MacOS Mojave v10.14 here, I solved it by adding LDFLAGS in addition to CXXFLAGS:

env LDFLAGS="-mmacosx-version-min=10.9" CXXFLAGS="-mmacosx-version-min=10.9" npm install