What's the current recommended OS X/Xcode combination for building old stuff?

[ghettosynth]

I'm going to pare my aging mac mini back to a pre-64 bit only OS so I can use it to run some old stuff that will never get updated. I tried loading an old open source project with 32 bit build targets and the latest xcode complained. Ok, fair enough.

What is the recommended combination these days that people are using to keep building compatible stuff?

I'm assuming that the last 32/64 bit OS is the best choice, but maybe something earlier is more stable, less painful?

I also assume that I can get ahold of older xcode versions if, at minimum, I update my dev account with apple, yes?

[syntonica]

You can still download older versions of Xcode, at least last time I checked last year. You will probably need to log into your dev account. Sadly, Apple has been getting serious about eradicating older stuff from the Internet as they try and herd cats. They don't seem to get that some creative professionals still use older software because there's no upgrade path, or it just works for them and they don't want to risk messing up their machines.

I'm currently using a High Sierra machine with Xcode 9, although I've dropped 32-bit, so I probably could upgrade some of this. But, it handles back to 10.6 if you need to go that far back. IIRC, later versions of Xcode only go back to 10.9 or even later.

There are a couple of threads regarding Catalina that you might peruse that talk about building for older configs.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Among many environments, we are still using xcode 3.2 on a mavericks 9.0 vm.
For everything else an xcode 10.3 and 12.4 on Catalina 15.7 is enough. I think that's the minimum configuration number to cover 32/64 bits ranging from very old to silicon

[ghettosynth]

Thanks, I really appreciate the detail. I'm going to assume from this that High Sierra was the last non-irritating version to actually run 32 bit apps on?

But, it handles back to 10.6 if you need to go that far back. IIRC, later versions of Xcode only go back to 10.9 or even later.

I'm going to assume at this point that there really isn't much demand for really old versions of OS/X, but, that there are still a lot of people who have chosen not to upgrade past High Sierra?

[sprnva]

You can use XcodeLegacy to add old SDKs to newer Xcode versions. It's not always necessary to run really old Xcode versions or OS versions if you can target an appropriate SDK. At one stage I was able to compile a PowerPC plugin (AU and VST2) for Tiger with Xcode 6.4 on Yosemite.

As for High Sierra, going beyond that requires a graphics card that supports Metal. There are hacks around this in some cases but they're messy.

[ghettosynth]

You can use XcodeLegacy to add old SDKs to newer Xcode versions. It's not always necessary to run really old Xcode versions or OS versions if you can target an appropriate SDK. At one stage I was able to compile a PowerPC plugin (AU and VST2) for Tiger with Xcode 6.4 on Yosemite.

As for High Sierra, going beyond that requires a graphics card that supports Metal. There are hacks around this in some cases but they're messy.

Ok, xcodelegacy looks great, thanks for sharing.