[webkit-dev] Compiling on Tiger and running the binary on Leopard causes vm_map() to fail

[Darin Adler]

On Sep 10, 2009, at 9:04 AM, Kent Hansen wrote:

> JavaScriptCore uses some compile-time defines to decide which flags  
> to pass to vm_map() and mmap(), depending on the Mac OS version.  
> Now, if WebKit is built and run on the same version, that's  
> obviously fine, but we've found that if we build on Tiger but run on  
> Leopard, the vm_map() call fails.

That's right. There are many places where WebKit makes compile time  
assumptions about Tiger vs. Leopard vs. Snow Leopard.

> Can/should the decision of which flags to pass be made at runtime  
> instead?

This is only one of the many different places you'll have to add more  
logic and runtime checks to WebKit if you want to build a single  
binary that works well on Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard. Doing that  
project will be quite challenging!

Adding runtime checks would be OK, but the main version of WebKit,  
built for Mac OS X, should not have such runtime checks. So you'll  
have to figure out an appropriate way to do the #if so that we don't  
add unnecessary runtime overhead to the standard Mac OS X WebKit.

     -- Darin