Apple will be transitioning to ARM in the near future, starting with their Big Sur release.

It would be great if we can get nixpkgs support for compiling ARM packages on Darwin

The NixOS Foundation has access to a Developer Transition Kit for testing, thanks to the friendly folks at Apple.

For now @edolstra and @rbvermaa have access to this DTK.

Note that we can get additional DTKs approved for anyone interested working on this ticket. We have a contact at Developer Relations who can help us with this. Please contact me if you would like to order a DTK to work on Nixpkgs support. (Cost is 500 US Dollars)

We also could get access to cloud machines through MacStadium. This might be interesting at a later stage for Hydra?

The original email that I got from Apple DevRel

Firstly, the most expedient way of obtaining a DTK would be for companies who have Nix maintainers and are registered as Apple developers can learn about the Universal Quick Start Program and apply for a DTK here:

https://developer.apple.com/programs/universal/

If this is the way your maintainers want to go, I would be happy to approve the applications to purchase the program. Someone noted on the thread they had applied and not been approved. I have approved then. Please let me know if there are any others.

Secondly, we have a relationship with MacStadium where qualified open source projects can simply get access to a DTK in the cloud. The maintainers of Nix should email [email protected].

The process for qualified OSS developers will be:

Developer signs up for a general MacStadium account so the MSA can be accepted.
MacStadium will manually add the DTK asset to their account at no cost.
Developer will have access to screen sharing on a DTK and can log in right away