Lessons Learned Developing in a macOS VM on Apple Silicon

[IsaacToast]

Here are some key takeaways from my experience trying to develop with HISE in a a macOS virtual machine running on Apple Silicon using Apple’s Virtualization Framework.

I did this because because I am paranoid about security, but there may be other reasons one would want to develop in a VM. Hopefully this will save you some time if you are thinking of attempting to do the same.

1. macOS VMs running on Apple Silicon machines using Apple’s Virtualization Framework cannot use external USB at this time as there is no passthrough from the host- so testing MIDI from an external controller isn’t possible as far as I can tell.

2. You cannot log into your Apple ID from within a VM at this time, so signing your binaries becomes nigh impossible.

3. Because you cannot sign into the App Store with your Apple ID, you will need to copy your preferred DAW into your VM for testing purposes. Since it is free and doesn’t require licensing, I just dragged GarageBand into my VM’s shared folder and that did the trick. This may not work with Logic, ProTools or Ableton LIVE.

For Xcode, I had to download that off Apple’s developer website since I had a version mismatch between my host environment (Ventura) and my dev VM (Sonoma).

4. Everything else ran swimmingly under Sonoma and the development branch of HISE from a few days ago.

So, if you aren’t trying to sign your code and aren’t trying to develop an instrument or plugin that you need to test with an external midi controller, then you shouldn’t have a problem.

Hope that helps!

[d.healey]

@IsaacToast said in Lessons Learned Developing in a macOS VM on Apple Silicon:

You cannot log into your Apple ID from within a VM

I do on my VMs (running with Proxmox).

[IsaacToast]

@d-healey said in Lessons Learned Developing in a macOS VM on Apple Silicon:

I do on my VMs (running with Proxmox).

Oh good to know! Are you able to use passthrough USB as well?

[d.healey]

@IsaacToast I just tested and it doesn't seem to work. I don't use Mac for development though, only compiling so it's not an issue for me. If I needed it I'd just plug a keyboard into the Proxmox server.

[IsaacToast]

Thanks @d-healey . I might check out Proxmox in that case.

And now that you mention it, I think I did read somewhere that VMWare users were able to sign in to their Apple IDs as well after doing some tweaking of the VM’s serial number or something like that.

[ospfeigrp]

@d-healey is it possible to view the system with novnc or do you need to passthrough the gpu and use a physical monitor?

[d.healey]

@IsaacToast said in Lessons Learned Developing in a macOS VM on Apple Silicon:

tweaking of the VM’s serial number or something like that.

I saw that too, but I didn't have to do that.

@ospfeigrp said in Lessons Learned Developing in a macOS VM on Apple Silicon:

@d-healey is it possible to view the system with novnc or do you need to passthrough the gpu and use a physical monitor?

I'm viewing it over the network with virt viewer (not sure what the equivalent is on Windows).

[ospfeigrp]

@d-healey this might be a handy way to go thanks i should be able to test all systems from the one server. Any links for the OC configs?

[d.healey]

@ospfeigrp said in Lessons Learned Developing in a macOS VM on Apple Silicon:

OC

What's OC?