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Creating a Universal Binary With Xcode 3.2.6

Uncategorized Jul 08, 2011

Last week I released a minor update to VirtualHostX. Shortly thereafter, my inbox was flooded with reports of an “unsupported architecture” error on launch. After a quick lipo test I verified that somehow I had managed to build and ship the app as Intel only — no PowerPC support.

I went through my git revision history and was able to track down the error. From what I can tell, the Xcode 3.2.6 update removes the default universal binary option. That’s fine for new projects, but I was completely taken by surprise to see it modify the build settings of an existing project.

Regardless, now that the (once famous) universal binary checkbox is gone, here’s how to add PowerPC support back.

In your target’s build settings, change “Architectures” to “Other” and specify “ppc i386 x86_64”.

Universal Binary Settings

Note: It’s entirely possible this whole episode was my fuck-up and not Xcode, but there are a bunch of similar reports online. So who knows? It certainly wasn’t mentioned in the release notes.