macOS 11 (Big Sur) status update

Could we have an update on both the general availability of Big Sur executors and Xcode 12.5 please? The latter is now a RC with the final release due this week and as things stand we’re going to be left being unable to run our CI jobs on the latest available Xcode. I really would have expected this to be ready in time.

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The day has arrived, iOS 14.5 is out and we require MacOS 11 to run Xcode 12.5.

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Here’s what I know right now:

We are opening our Big Sur preview this week for existing customers. If you’re interested, read more about the preview and sign up here.

I’ll post updates as I get them!

Hi @thekatertot. I’m echoing other comments already posted here, but we really need some clarity about the plans for Big Sur and Xcode 12.5+ support going forward.

What does ‘Big Sur preview’ mean? We need to deploy our production apps with Xcode 12.5+ and expect a stable, tested build environment to be available.

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Hi @robmaceachern!

The Big Sur Preview is production ready. As I understand it, it’s in preview because there may still be some changes on our end, but it will open to everyone soon. We’re definitely supporting Big Sur and Xcode.

I’m sorry I can’t be more specific right now - I’m working with our internal MacOS team to clarify.

@thekatertot due to the App Tracking Transparency changes in iOS 14.5, Apple has already started requiring that apps utilizing the AdId be submitted to the App Store with Xcode 12.5. We’re in a difficult position now with Apple requiring a tooling version that we’re not able to use through our CI pipeline.

Are you able to provide any more concrete timing updates?

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Can we please get an update on XCode 12.5 on when this will be publicly available?

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Thank you all for your patience! I know you need this and the team is on it. We’ve been a little understaffed, but we haven’t forgotten about you!

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Hello again, everyone! We know you want to get started with XCode 12.5. Our process had to change for this version and we hit a couple snags, but all you have to do is fill out this form to get 12.5.

We appreciate your patience!

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I filled it out. now what?

Our organization is also interested in Xcode 12.5 / Big Sur support. The 24-hr-minimum licensing change by Apple is rather unfortunate, but I think we’d still lean toward that option instead of setting up and managing our own build infrastructure at the moment.

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You’ll be notified by the team once you’ve been updated.

@thekatertot Any timeline on when the changes you’ve hinted at and found in the form mentioned above would be implemented?

@thekatertot I filled out the form nearly 3 weeks ago but I haven’t heard from your team. How long is the expected wait?

I don’t know how many people you have working on Developer relations at CircleCI, but its been definitely lacking when it comes to giving us dates and timelines on support. I suggest you guys beef up your customer support in this area as you guys are a billion dollar company now.

Update:

As of right now, Scale, Performance, or Custom plan customers should fill out this form for access to the Big Sur with XCode 12.5. There were links to a different form in previous posts, but this is the form that the team is using to add customers to Big Sur. I’ll be editing links in previous posts to match this one to avoid confusion.

The 12.5 image should be available for people who have filled out this form very soon (this week hopefully).

Xcode 12.5 isn’t actually a RC anymore, it’s been final release for a few weeks now.

There’s a third option that doesn’t appear to have been considered by the CircleCI product team, and I’m curious as to why it didn’t make the cut.

Our team runs 100+ iOS workflows per month, however those workflows generally do not happen in parallel, and we can afford to wait a little if they do collide.

We Really Don’t Want to manage infrastructure, however it seems unusual to pay for ~100 days of machine time when a single dedicated runner would be able to manage our workloads.

CircleCI already offers the self-hosted runner as an option. It would be massively beneficial to us if we could rent managed Big Sur runners which run the CircleCI Runner product, fully managed by CircleCI. We could pay for X dedicated machines which only run our jobs, billed in a monthly increment and they would behave exactly like self-hosted runners.

Is there any chance of this ever being a thing?

Update here!

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