A GCC-based cross-compilation environment for 68K and PowerPC Macs. Why? Because there is no decent C++17 Compiler targeting Apple's System 6. If that's not a sufficient reason for you, I'm sure you will find something more useful elsewhere.

If you are crazy enough to try it out, please say hello at wolfgang.thaller@gmx.net.

The Retro68 git repository uses submodules; be sure to use the --recursive option to git clone or use

git submodule update --init

after cloning. To get the latest changes, use

git pull
git submodule update

Note: There is now experimental support for the Nix Package Manager. If you're a nix user, skip ahead to the Using Retro68 with Nix section.

• Linux, Mac OS X or Windows (via Cygwin)
• boost
• CMake 3.9 or later
• GCC dependencies: GMP 4.2+, MPFR 2.3.1+ and MPC 0.8.0+
• bison version 3.0.2 or later
• ruby version 2.1 or later
• flex
• texinfo
• Recommended: Apple Universal Interfaces (version 3.x; version 3.4 is tested)
• An ancient Mac and/or an emulator.

For Ubuntu Linux, the following should help a bit:

sudo apt-get install cmake libgmp-dev libmpfr-dev libmpc-dev libboost-all-dev bison flex texinfo ruby

For Arch Linux, this should do the trick:

sudo pacman -S --needed cmake gmp mpfr libmpc boost bison flex texinfo ruby

On a Mac, get the homebrew package manager and:

brew install boost cmake gmp mpfr libmpc bison texinfo

You can also run Retro68 on a PowerMac G4 or G5 running Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger). In that case, get the tigerbrew package manager and

brew install gcc cmake gmp mpfr libmpc bison texinfo
brew install boost --c++11

To compile code for the Mac, you need header files and libraries describing the APIs. There are two choices: Apple's Universal Interfaces, or the brand-new open source reimplementation, the Multiversal Interfaces.

The Multiversal Interfaces are included with Retro68 out of the box, and they are free software. However, they are incomplete and may still contain serious bugs. Missing things include Carbon, MacTCP, OpenTransport, Navigation Services, and basically everything introduced after System 7.0.

The Universal Interfaces used to be a free download from Apple. However, they have taken the site off-line and the license agreement does not allow redistribution, which is why it's not included in this repository. The concept of fair use might cover keeping it available for reasons of historical interest, or it might not. I am not a lawyer.

If you find a copy of Apple's Universal Interfaces, you can put it inside the InterfacesAndLibraries directory in the source tree, and Version 3.4 has received the most testing, but any 3.x version could theoretically work. The exact directory layout inside the InterfacesAndLibraries directory does not matter. It will be picked up automatically when Retro68 is built.

Especially on non-macOS platforms, make sure that the Mac resource fork of the PowerPC library files is included in a format recognized by Retro68. Recognized formats include MacBinary II (e.g., Interfacelib.bin), AppleDouble (._InterfaceLib or %InterfaceLib) or Basilisk/Sheepshaver resource forks (.rsrc/InterfaceLib).

The Universal Interfaces were also included with Apple's free-to-download Macintosh Programmer's Workshop (MPW; redistribution is not officially allowed, either) and with Metrowerks CodeWarrior.

One of the most easily found downloads is the MPW 3.5 Golden Master release, usually in a file named MPW-GM.img.bin or mpw-gm.img_.bin. At the time of this writing, this can be found at:

http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macintosh-programmers-workshop
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/1360-macintosh-programmer-s-workshop-mpw-3-0-to-3-5
https://staticky.com/mirrors/ftp.apple.com/developer/Tool_Chest/Core_Mac_OS_Tools/MPW_etc./MPW-GM_Images/MPW-GM.img.bin

You will need a Mac or a Mac emulator (with DiscCopy) to read that file.

You can compile Retro68 on Windows using via a Cygwin terminal. When installing Cygwin, select the following packages in the Cygwin Setup program (as per the dependencies listed above):

• bison
• cmake
• flex
• gcc-core
• gcc-g++
• libboost-devel
• libgmp-devel
• libmpc-devel
• libmpfr-devel
• make
• texinfo
• zlib-devel

Additional dependencies will be automatically installed.

Note that compilation via Cygwin is around 3X slower than other platforms.

Once you have all the prerequisites, execute these commands from the top level of the Retro68 directory:

mkdir ../Retro68-build
cd ../Retro68-build
../Retro68/build-toolchain.bash

The toolchain will be installed in the "toolchain" directory inside the build directory. All the commands are in toolchain/bin, so you might want to add that to your PATH.

If you're building this on a PowerMac running Mac OS X 10.4, tell the build script to use the gcc you've installed via tigerbrew:

../Retro68/build-toolchain.bash --host-cxx-compiler=g++-7 --host-c-compiler=gcc-7

Building all of Retro68 involves building binutils and gcc... twice, so it takes quite a while.

You can pass the --no-68k, --no-ppc or --no-carbon flags to build-toolchain to limit yourself to the old Macs you're really interested in (note that --no-ppc implies --no-carbon).

After the initial build, you can use the --skip-thirdparty option in order to skip gcc and binutils and just compile the Retro68-specific tools, libraries and sample programs. The build-host, build-target, build-target-ppc and build-target-carbon directories are CMake build directories generated from the top-level CMakeLists.txt, so you can also cd to one of these and run make separately if you've made changes.

If you are not using the Nix Package Manager, please skip this section. But maybe you should be using it ;-).

Nix is a package manager that runs on Linux and macOS, and NixOS is a Linux distribution based on it. Try the Determinate Nix Installer for the best installation experience.

[TODO: docs on using the binary cache to avoid builds]

Once you've got nix installed, and without checking out the Retro68 repository, you can run

nix develop github:autc04/Retro68#m68k

from the Retro68 directory to get a shell with the compiler tools targeting 68K Macs available in the path, and CC and other environment variables already set up for you. You can then cd to one of the example directories or to your own project and use cmake to build it.

Likewise, use

nix develop github:autc04/Retro68#powerpc

... to get an environment targeting PowerPC Macs.

If you have a local checkout of Retro68, you can replace github:autc04/Retro68 by the path to that local checkout, e.g., run nix develop .#m68k from inside the Retro68 directory.

To see how to set up your own nix-based build and development environment for your own application, head over to the github.com/autc04/Retro68NixSample repository.

You can also use the nix build command to build packages. As always with nix, the result will be somewhere in a subdirectory of /nix/store, with a symlink named result placed in the directory where you invoked the command.

You can attempt to cross-compile any package from the nixpkgs collection. Unless the package contains a very portable library, the command will of course fail. Please don't report bugs, please report successes instead!

Whenever commits are merged into the Retro68 git repository, a build pipeline is triggered to create a container image which is then pushed to the Retro68 package repository as ghcr.io/autc04/retro68. This image contains the complete 68K and PPC toolchains ready for use for either local development or as part of CI pipeline. The command line below shows an example invocation of Retro68 to build the Samples/Raytracer app:

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/autc04/Retro68.git
$ cd Retro68
$ docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/root -i ghcr.io/autc04/retro68 /bin/bash <<"EOF"
    cd Samples/Raytracer
    rm -rf build && mkdir build && cd build
    cmake .. -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/Retro68-build/toolchain/m68k-apple-macos/cmake/retro68.toolchain.cmake
    make
EOF

The container image is configured by default to use the multiversal interfaces, but it is possible to use the universal interfaces by passing a path to either a local file or a URL that points to a Macbinary DiskCopy image containing the "Interfaces&Libraries" directory from MPW.

Using the universal interfaces from a local file:

$ docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/root -v $(pwd)/MPW-GM.img.bin:/tmp/MPW-GM.img.bin \
  -e INTERFACES=universal -e INTERFACESFILE=/tmp/MPW-GM.img.bin \
  -i ghcr.io/autc04/retro68 /bin/bash <<"EOF"
    cd Samples/Raytracer
    rm -rf build && mkdir build && cd build
    cmake .. -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/Retro68-build/toolchain/m68k-apple-macos/cmake/retro68.toolchain.cmake
    make
EOF

Using the universal interfaces from a URL:

$ docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/root \
  -e INTERFACES=universal -e INTERFACESFILE=https://mysite.com/MPW-GM.img.bin \
  -i ghcr.io/autc04/retro68 /bin/bash <<"EOF"
    cd Samples/Raytracer
    rm -rf build && mkdir build && cd build
    cmake .. -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/Retro68-build/toolchain/m68k-apple-macos/cmake/retro68.toolchain.cmake
    make
EOF

Note that docker-entrypoint.sh checks to see if the universal interfaces are installed into /Retro68/toolchain/universal first before attempting to access the file or URL specified by INTERFACESFILE. This means that it is possible to use caching or another volume so that the universal interfaces are only processed once to speed up builds e.g.

$ docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/root \
  -v $(pwd)/universal:/Retro68-build/toolchain/universal \
  -e INTERFACES=universal -e INTERFACESFILE=https://mysite.com/MPW-GM.img.bin \
  -i ghcr.io/autc04/retro68 /bin/bash <<"EOF"
    cd Samples/Raytracer
    rm -rf build && mkdir build && cd build
    cmake .. -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/Retro68-build/toolchain/m68k-apple-macos/cmake/retro68.toolchain.cmake
    make
EOF

and then on subsequent runs:

$ docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/root \
  -v $(pwd)/universal:/Retro68-build/toolchain/universal \
  -e INTERFACES=universal \
  -i ghcr.io/autc04/retro68 /bin/bash <<"EOF"
    cd Samples/Raytracer
    rm -rf build && mkdir build && cd build
    cmake .. -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/Retro68-build/toolchain/m68k-apple-macos/cmake/retro68.toolchain.cmake
    make
EOF

Sample programs are built in several formats:

• On Macs: Real Mac Applications (ApplicationName.APPL)
• Elsewhere: ApplicationName.APPL, .rsrc/ApplicationName.APPL, .finf/ApplicationName.APPL (BasiliskII/Sheepshaver compatible)
• MacBinary files (ApplicationName.bin)
• Raw HFS disk image (ApplicationName.dsk, containing ApplicationName)
• AppleDouble file pairs (ApplicationName.ad, %ApplicationName.ad, Executor compatible)

Look under Retro68-build/build-target/ (68K), Retro68-build/build-target-ppc/ (PowerPC Classic) and Retro68-build/build-target-carbon/ (PowerPC Carbon) for the compiled examples, especially under the Samples subdirectory.

Retro68 is an aggegation of various existing free software projects with a few components added.

Third Party Components:

• binutils 2.39
• gcc 12.2.0
• newlib 4.2 (inside the gcc directory)
• libelf from elfutils-0.170
• hfsutils 3.2.6

Retro68-Specific Components:

• ResourceFiles library
• Rez
• PEFTools (MakePEF and MakeImport)
• Elf2Mac
• LaunchAPPL
• libretro
• TestApps - a few tiny test programs
• AutomatedTests
• Sample Programs: Raytracer, HelloWorld, Launcher, Dialog

Two new target platforms:

• m68k-apple-macos, based on the m68k-unknown-elf target
• powerpc-apple-macos, based on the powerpc-ibm-aix target

The powerpc target has a few hacks to make weak symbols work as expected. The elf target has a hack to protect MacsBug symbols from -gc-sections.

Various patches and hacks:

• New target platforms m68k-apple-macos and powerpc-apple-macos.
• support "\pPascal String Literals"

68K specific:

• Changed register usage.
• Change the way 1-byte and 2-byte parameters are passed.
• added a pascal calling convention (pascal or __attribute__((__pascal__)))
• added __attribute__((__raw_inline__(word1, word2, word3))) to emulate ONEWORDINLINE and friends
• added __attribute__((regparam("..."))) to specify custom register calling conventions
• added #pragma parameter to specify custom register calling conventions
• added support for the = { 0x1234 } syntax for inline machine code.

PowerPC specific:

• New flag -carbon that makes gcc link with -lCarbonLib instead of -lInterfaceLib

Standard C library. Currently unmodified. The missing platform-dependent bits haven't been added, instead they are found in 'libretro'.

A library for convenient access to ELF files, taken from the elfutils-0.170 package. Or rather, brutally ripped out of it, hacked to compile on non-linux platforms (<endian.h> is not a standard header file), and made to build with cmake instead of autotools. Much simpler now.

No changes.

A C++ Library for manipulating resource forks.

A reimplementation of Apple's Rez resource compiler. Reads .r files containing textual resource descriptions and compiles them to binary resource files.

A wrapper around the linker for 68K programs; it supplies a linker script, invokes the linker, and converts the resulting ELF binary to a Mac APPL with one or more segments, or to a flat file which can be converted to a code resource using Rez.

A tool for lauching compiled Mac applications via various emulators.

Reads a MPW 68K Object file (*.o) and converts it to input for the GNU assembler (powerpc-apple-macos-as). Well, as long as the .o file does not use global variables or non-local function calls. Used to import glue code from MPW's Interface.o library.

Tools supporting the Apple's PEF format, the Preferred Executable Format for PowerPC Macs.

• MakePEF, a tool to convert xcoff files to PEF.
• MakeImport, a tool to create an xcoff import stub library from a PEF-format library.

Apply any necessary patches to Apple's headers.

Import Libraries in XCOFF format. Based on the list of symbols in Apple's import libraries. Generated using the MakeImport tool.

Contains startup code (handles relocations on 68K) and implementations for some standard library functions.

Contains a library that implements basic text console functionality.

An automated test suite that can be run using ctest and LaunchAPPL.

The binary is in Retro68-build/build-target/Samples/HelloWorld/.

Calculates a nice 3D image, pixel by pixel. There are two versions: raytracer.c is a straightforward plain C implementation using floating point arithmetic.

Raytracer2 makes use of C++ features; it also uses fixed point arithmetic instead of floating point (operator overloading FTW).

The binaries are in Retro68-build/build-target/Samples/Raytracer/.

A utility program for using Retro68 together with the minivmac emulator. Waits for a disk(image) to be inserted, and if it contains a single application, launches it. After the application exits, the disk is ejected again. This way, you can just drag a .dsk file generated by Retro68 on a minivmac Window to run your application.

Intended for System 6 without Multifinder.

Shows a simple and useless dialog box. Demonstrates how to use Rez, the resource compiler. The binary is in Retro68-build/build-target/Samples/Dialog/.

On the one hand, this is an example for a very basic multi window application with menus and desk accessories. On the other hand, it shows how to write code resources like WDEF window definition procedures.

The original parts of Retro68 are licensed under GPL3+, as are most other parts. Some parts are licensed GPL2+ or with more liberal licenses. The libretro runtime library is licensed under GPL3+ with the GCC runtime exception (see COPYING.RUNTIME, so there are no licensing restrictions on programs compiled with Retro68. Check the copyright notices in the individual files for details.

LaunchAPPL is a tool included with Retro68 intended to make launching the compiled Mac applications easier. Its use is optional, so you may skip reading this section.

Currently, LaunchAPPL supports the following methods for launching Mac applications:

• classic - launch in the Classic environment on PowerPC Macs up to Tiger (10.4)
• carbon - launch as a Carbon app on PowerPC Macs and via Rosetta on Intel Macs up to Snow Leopard (10.6)
• minivmac - launch using the Mini vMac emulator
• executor - launch using Executor
• ssh - Invoke the LaunchAPPL tool remotely via ssh
• serial - Connect to a real Mac running the LaunchAPPLServer application via a null modem cable
• tcp - Connect to a real Mac running the LaunchAPPLServer application via a completely insecure TCP connection
• shared - Communicate with LaunchAPPLServer via files in a shared folder

If you're running on a Mac that's old enough to use the classic or carbon backends, they will work out of the box, just launch an application as follows (assuming you've added Retro68-build/toolchain/bin to your PATH):

LaunchAPPL -e classic Retro68-build/build-target/Samples/Raytracer/Raytracer2.bin
LaunchAPPL -e carbon Retro68-build/build-target-carbon/Samples/Raytracer/Raytracer2.bin

To specify either environment as a default, or to configure one of the other emulators, copy the file Retro68/LaunchAPPL/LaunchAPPL.cfg.example to ~/.LaunchAPPL.cfg and edit to taste (documentation is provided in comments).

CONTRIBUTION OPPORTUNITY - This tool can easily be extended with further backends, so make it work with your favourite emulator. Just add new subclasses for the LaunchMethod and Launcher classes, they're documented.

The directory AutomatedTests contains an automated test suite that runs via LaunchAPPL. It's currently only relevant if you want to hack on the low-level parts of Retro68.

The test suite will be configured automatically on sufficiently old Macs. Everywhere else, first configure LaunchAPPL (see above).

To run the tests, invoke ctest in the Retro68-build directory, or in one of the build-target, build-target-ppc or build-target-carbon directories.

ctest

You can also use the cmake variable RETRO68_LAUNCH_METHOD to override the LaunchAPPL default for specific platforms:

cmake . -DRETRO68_LAUNCH_METHOD=minivmac