Over the years, the list of technologies upon which Apple depends has grown longer. These technologies provide a great deal of benefit to both developers and end users. Fortunately, Apple provides, supports and maintains the tools required to use these technologies at no cost to developers. Unfortunately, Apple only provides tools that run on macOS. Because of some of Apple’s recent decisions, it is no longer possible to build Xojo projects for Mac from Windows or Linux. Over the last few months we’ve looked for solutions. While creating our own tools for these Apple technologies is possible, it would be a significant effort to create and also support and maintain them. The time we would spend doing this is time we would not spend moving Xojo forward along the Roadmap.
Whatever solution we come up with in the future will ultimately require a Mac to build for macOS. If you are developing applications for any OS, testing them on that OS is highly recommended anyway. For those of you who use Xojo primarily on Windows and Linux we know this is far from ideal and if a solution is viable in the future, we will certainly explore it. Because the Xojo IDE is cross-platform, you can continue to develop on your Windows or Linux machines even though you’ll need a Mac when it comes time to test and compile for macOS.
UPDATE (Aug. 31, 2021) – We have found a solution for this and have now added building and remote debugging for macOS from Windows and Linux to the Xojo Roadmap.