Build/test for Mac M1 models

[philrz]

Brim has traditionally supported macOS, but most of that time has been in the era of Intel-based Macs. Apple has more recently introduced their Macs based on the M1 chip. Smoke tests have confirmed that the Mac releases we currently ship seem to run fine on them. However, when conditions allow we'd surely like to improve our coverage here. Two things come to mind:

1. GitHub Actions will need to provide runners based on M1 Macs (tracked by virtual-environments/2187) so we can run our CI on them and confirm that we don't have M1-specific bugs
2. We'd want to start building macOS artifacts that include the Electron with M1 support to deliver the best possible performance on these platforms

[mattnibs]

I love it. As far as I'm aware with electron 11 so this should be possible.

A couple of points:

• Not sure GitHub actions will have arm macOS runners anytime soon. That said I think we'll still be able to build on x86 for arm.
• We'll want to have run tests on the arm build. Could rely on manual tests in the meantime?
• Ideally would also have arm build of the accompanying binaries. ZQD will have to wait until go 1.16 is released. I have no knowledge of the feasibility of building zeek and suricata for arm. Luckily they should all be able to run w/ Rosetta 2.

[philrz]

Note this issue is linked to from the "Supported Platforms" article in the Brim wiki. If/when this issue is addressed, the article should be updated.

[Ondjultomte]

Any news on native M1 support?

[Ondjultomte]

Any news onthe m1 version ?

[jameskerr]

Last week we spent a little time researching this. It doesn't seem that difficult. We will keep this in mind during our next planning meeting.

[jameskerr]

First someone needs to gift me an M1 so I can test it 😛

[philrz]

@jameskerr: My recollection is @mattnibs does own an M1-based Mac laptop so could potentially be recruited for smoke testing. But as long as we're doing our builds on GitHub-hosted macOS Actions runners, it seems like their ability to offer the platform is what would limit our ability to do this on a continuous basis. Checking on the still-open issue https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments/issues/2187 linked above, it looks like the subject has made its way to some "GitHub roadmap" item at https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/528. Per something echoed by other commenters in the original issue, it's not clear when it will actually be available for use, though. 🤔

[graelo]

Hi, with GH Self-Hosted runners, the effort to adapt the existing CI would be minimal. However, it means that the M1 laptop must have the runner configured and running during release builds. In my experience, it works smoothly.

Here are a couple resources:

• https://docs.github.com/en/actions/hosting-your-own-runners/managing-self-hosted-runners/about-self-hosted-runners
• https://betterprogramming.pub/run-github-actions-self-hosted-macos-runners-on-apple-m1-mac-b559acd6d783

I'm looking forward to it! Cheers