Why does Virtualbox need Universal binaries?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On May 16, 2013, at 05:50, John Ruschmeyer wrote:

> Second on the "buildbot + universal" suggestion.

https://trac.macports.org/ticket/35897

> That was my big disappointment with building Virtualbox- now almost every package has going to have to be built from source, rather than installed from binary from now on.

Only on Macs that don't use the 64-bit Intel kernel. Note that some early 64-bit Intel Macs that use the 32-bit kernel under Snow Leopard use the 64-bit kernel under Lion and Mountain Lion, so upgrading your OS may be a way that you can avoid the problem.

There are many restrictions to binaries; you've merely found one more (which only applies to the ports that build kernel extensions, which can be counted on one hand). We only have buidbots for Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion; only for 64-bit (unless a universal version is required by a port); only for default variants; only for default prefix, frameworks_dir and applications_dir; only for ports where the licenses allow binary redistribution, … Binaries are a convenience (and a recently-added one at that), and not a necessity.