Anybody have Delphi running in a VM on M-series Mac?

[David Schwartz 428]

I spent some time asking around and posting things in different places, including going to an Apple Store and talking with their "experts", trying to get an answer to a simple question:

 

I have an Intel Mac Mini running a VirtualBox VM that has Win 10 running in it. I use Delphi to build stuff, mainly web apps using TMS WEB Core. My goal is to MOVE that VM over to a new M4-based Mac Mini.

 

It seems that when you cut through all of the handwaving and BS that Apple, VMWare, and Parallels Marketing machines have published, the answer is a flat NO, IT'S NOT POSSIBLE. 

 

Can anybody prove that is INCORRECT?

 

If so, please answer these questions:

* What version of Delphi is it?

* What version of Windows did you have on the Intel box, and what version are you running on the Mac?

* What VM platform (VirtualBox, VMware Fusion, or Parallels) and VERSION are you using?

* What Mx chip is in your new Mac?

* How EXACTLY did you MOVE the earlier VM running Windows 10 over to the new M-series Mac?

 

 

 

 

Edited 13 hours ago by David Schwartz

[Dave Nottage 563]

8 minutes ago, David Schwartz said:

It seems that when you cut through all of the handwaving and BS that Apple, VMWare, and Parallels Marketing machines have published, the answer is a flat NO, IT'S NOT POSSIBLE. 

I can imagine that is the case. From (my sketchy) memory, I think I did investigate moving from an older VM, but in the end I started a new one. I tend to have as little installed on the VM as possible, so it wasn't difficult to bring one "up to speed"

 

I have a Macbook Pro with an M1 Max, running a Windows 11 Arm VM (one with Delphi 12.2 and one with Delphi 11.3) using Parallels 20.1.1

 

 

Edited 13 hours ago by Dave Nottage

[Patrick PREMARTIN 81]

the virtualisation software don't convert x64 to ARM code

 

on a Mx Mac you need to use Windows ARM

 

you can't move an x64 VM to an ARM computer, neither on PC nor Mac

 

on the other hand, everything can be installed without any problem, as long as there's no need for a specific driver that hasn't been ported to ARM.

[Rollo62 539]

I'm afraid a "move" from older to newer is not possible, but I also would always recommend a new, fresh VM anyway, even if it would be possible,

to ensure the always best performance on a new platform.
Since the setup of such new machines always may take up to one week, until a setup is fully configured on all platforms, I usually proceed a strict checklist for that.

There is a 2 year old post from Germany, about running Delphi on Apple Silicon, maybe that's helpful too ( should be able to be auto-translated ).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc2mLROXWcQ

[Brandon Staggs 284]

Your VM does not have the correct operating system installed on it for that to work. It's the responsibility of the installed Windows OS on the VM to translate x86/x64 code to ARM instructions. Your version of Windows won't do that.

[David Schwartz 428]

Yep, this is pretty much what I've concluded after about 10 hours of messing around and digging through all of the explanations about how to do what y'all say is impossible. 

 

Will any version of D10.4 run on an M-series Mac? I've read where 32-bit code will NOT run on an x64 ARM version of Windows, and I'm not aware of when Delphi was fully converted to x64 architecture.

 

I'm leaning more towards using my Intel-based Mac Mini to just running the VM with Delphi in it, along with just a few other things, for maximum performance. (It has a 6-core i7 with 36GB of RAM, so without a bunch of browser windows open, it really screams.)

 

 

 

Edited 4 hours ago by David Schwartz

[Brandon Staggs 284]

53 minutes ago, David Schwartz said:

Will any version of D10.4 run on an M-series Mac? I've read where 32-bit code will NOT run on an x64 ARM version of Windows, and I'm not aware of when Delphi was fully converted to x64 architecture.

That is simply incorrect. My ARM64 (Snapdragon) Windows laptop runs 32-bit x86 code just fine.

 

Delphi is still a 32-bit IDE. They have 64-bit compilers now if you want to pay for an Enterprise license but the rest of us are slumming it in 32-bits and that's not a problem for ARM-based Windows.

[Patrick PREMARTIN 81]

1 hour ago, David Schwartz said:

Yep, this is pretty much what I've concluded after about 10 hours of messing around and digging through all of the explanations about how to do what y'all say is impossible. 

 

Will any version of D10.4 run on an M-series Mac? I've read where 32-bit code will NOT run on an x64 ARM version of Windows, and I'm not aware of when Delphi was fully converted to x64 architecture.

 

I'm leaning more towards using my Intel-based Mac Mini to just running the VM with Delphi in it, along with just a few other things, for maximum performance. (It has a 6-core i7 with 36GB of RAM, so without a bunch of browser windows open, it really screams.)

 

 

 

I'm on a Parallels VM of Windows ARM since the release of the ARM version of Parallels. All is working fine (except the debugger some times).

 

My Mac mini M1 has 8Gb RAM and  256Gb SSD. It's enough to work but 16Gb RAM is better to open more than 1 VM and 1To of SSD is better to not have external SSD on each USB port... 😉

 

You can leave your Intel Mac or use it to test your x32/x64 programs compiled for macOS or Windows with Delphi.