Please describe the problem in your own words.
While setting up an old MacBook Pro (2012) to run as a git-annex disk repository, I found that the current macOS Standalone build no longer runs on macOS 10.15 / Catalina, despite the directory name.
It looks like some of the dependencies used are only built for macOS 14 or later (which is unsurprising, as I believe current macOS Developer tools force macOS 14 or later). And macOS 10.15 went entirely unsupported earlier this year (not even extended security support), so it's unsurprising it's no longer a build target. (IIRC macOS 14 is also the oldest version that HomeBrew builds against now.)
I'm reporting it just as a suggestion that maybe the macOS build directory for downloads gets renamed to, eg, macOS 14, which is macOS Sonomoa, to reflect the current situation. And the OSX page gets updated to reflect that, and maybe link to some older build for "old macOS".
(macOS 10.15 is the last macOS version to run on this MacBook Pro 2012, so I'll try digging back into older builds for a git-annex build that will run on macOS 10.15. Fortunately it's very internal, so latest-security-patches isn't a huge concern. This is just hardware upcycling while it still works.)
What steps will reproduce the problem?
On a macOS 10.15.8 (Catalina) system, install the current macOS Standalone build, add it to $PATH, and then run git annex version. Observe it fails with a missing symbol:
dyld: Symbol not found: __ZNSt3__113basic_filebufIcNS_11char_traitsIcEEE4openEPKcj
apparently from a dependency .dylib, which AFAICT is libbotan-3.13, and it looks like that dylib dependency was built for macOS 14.
What version of git-annex are you using? On what operating system?
macOS standalone build in the 10.15_Catalina directory today, dated 2026-10-26 14:37. I'd assumed it was 10.20261026, but I think it might be 10.20261021 based on the App embedded metadata.
Please provide any additional information below.
ewen@dagoba:~$ uname -a
Darwin dagoba 19.6.0 Darwin Kernel Version 19.6.0: Tue Jun 21 21:18:39 PDT 2022; root:xnu-6153.141.66~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
ewen@dagoba:~$ git annex version
dyld: Symbol not found: __ZNSt3__113basic_filebufIcNS_11char_traitsIcEEE4openEPKcj
Referenced from: /Applications/OpenSource/git-annex.app/Contents/MacOS/bundle/D (which was built for Mac OS X 14.0)
Expected in: /usr/lib/libc++.1.dylib
error: git-annex died of signal 6
ewen@dagoba:~$
ewen@dagoba:~$ ls -l /Applications/OpenSource/git-annex.app/Contents/MacOS/bundle/D
lrwxr-xr-x 1 ewen admin 43 Oct 26 11:16 /Applications/OpenSource/git-annex.app/Contents/MacOS/bundle/D -> usr/local/opt/botan/lib/libbotan-3.13.dylib
ewen@dagoba:~$
Have you had any luck using git-annex before? (Sometimes we get tired of reading bug reports all day and a lil' positive end note does wonders)
Yes, git-annex has been very useful for years!
(Also, related to my previous bug report about more recent macOS Intel, dying with Signal 4 I can report that HomeBrew have updated their build options to no longer pin a pre-release package, and seems to be back to building against an older crypton without the problem. So that's encouraging!)
As additional context, it looks like MacPorts does now have a build of git-annex, although it seems infrequently updated (
Version: 10.20260316,Updated: 7 months, 2 weeks ago). It too doesn't support macOS 10.15 / Catalina any longer.But maybe it'd be worth linking from the OSX page if you think "a build, but maybe old" is worth users considering. (By contrast I think HomeBrew has active git-annex users, as it seems to get updated/rebuilt fairly soon after a new release.)
Ewen
For anyone else finding this issue and wondering, it appears that at least git-annex standalone build for macOS from 2025 does run on macOS 10.15 / Catalina still.
Obtained by following the instructions on the kitenet download page to check out the git annex containing the references to
archive.orgdownloads of old builds, and then usinggit logto find an "end of 2025" commit ofgit-annex.dmg, doing agit checkoutof that commit, and then agit annex get git-annex.dmgto download the file (from theweb, akaarchive.org). Note that since the uploads toarchive.orgare a git annex remote, they're uploaded by hash filename, and not particularly navigable without the git annex archive as metadata.(While "a year old" might seem rather old, the "old laptop as a git annex disk server" this upcycled laptop is replacing has an even older git annex, so this is still a substantial version upgrade!)
Likely some of the earlier
10.2026xxxxwill also run on macOS 10.15 / Catalina, but since I'm forced to run a git-annex before the "late 2026" security updates (eg, eMudhra "4 as a private key") anyway, in this specific use case (internal only git annex remote) I'm not sure there's much to be gained by trying to find the newest build that still runs. (My guess is "before macOS 27 came out", but likely older than that, since it seems "dependency builds switched to depending on macOS 13/14 SDK" is the breaking things. And from what I've found of NodeJS / dotNet etc similar bugs that specific macOS SDK function was added in macOS 13 or earlier.)Ewen
Also in case it helps someone else later, as best I can tell the release notes are in the git repository as
doc/news/version_10.20xxxxxx.mdwn, but it seems like the older release notes get deleted when newer ones are added (at a guess, to keep ~4 release notes showing up on the news page).This makes reviewing the release notes since an older release somewhat more difficult than it might be, as it seems like the only record of the older release notes is as deleted files, in the git history.
I ended up coming up with:
to see the release notes for 2026, in chronologically increasing order (ie oldest to newest). Where the magic git commit hash was found by searching with "git log" for the last 2025 / first 2026 commit to
doc/news, since the version I found that ran for me (on macOS 10.15) was the last 2025 standalone build, and thus I wanted to know what had changed since then.(Possibly older news articles could be
git mv-ed to an archive directory rather thangit rm-ed to make this easier in future, without cluttering up the news page?)Anyway skim reading the least year's worth of release notes (from the above command, and some slight tidying up), I don't see much that an internal-only git annex remote-only would particularly need before the various October 2026 fixes (which I can't easily have due to build dependencies not supporting macOS 10.15). The only thing that stood out as potentially desirable is the hash performance improvements in
git-annex 10.20260624, but for this mostly-archivable, infrequently updated use case I can probably live without those too.Ewen
The CHANGELOG file is what you want I think.
I've updated the website re MacPorts.
I suspect it may even need macOS 15. That's the OS that the build is happening on. I don't think it makes sense to include the supported OS version in the directory name really; it's unlikely there would be 2 incompatible versions that both would have builds happening.