Coreform Cubit MacOS and CentOS end of life announcement effective January 1, 2025

Coreform Cubit
#1

Effective January 1, 2025, Coreform will discontinue support for Coreform Cubit on MacOS and CentOS. We will continue to support Windows 10 and 11, OpenSuse, and Ubuntu 18, 20, and 22. We will add support for Rocky 8 on Linux.

After January 1, 2025, development of additional features and support for all Coreform Cubit on MacOS and CentOS will no longer be available. If you currently use Coreform Cubit on MacOS and CentOS, we will provide support until the end of your current maintenance period.

If you would like to contact us to discuss options for migrating to another edition of Coreform Cubit, please contact us at support@coreform.com.

Why is Coreform Cubit on MacOS support ending?

For Coreform Cubit on macOS, one of our critical component suppliers has discontinued support of macOS, which would make it impossible for us to maintain compatibility between Cubit files generated on the macOS, Windows, and Linux in the future.

Why is Coreform Cubit on CentOS support ending?

CentOS became a discontinued operating system on May 31, 2024. Thus it’s no longer feasible for Coreform to provide support. In response, we now support the Rocky Linux distribution as the spiritual successor of CentOS. We currently officially support Rocky 8, but have users reporting success on Rocky9.

Are there plans for an Apple Silicon native version of Cubit?
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#3

Hey Matt,

How does this apply to those running RHEL? It seems like Rocky is supposed to be compatible so I assume RHEL will still be supported?

#4

Hi @vtnick,

As you mention, Rocky Linux is designed to be 100% bug-for-bug compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Through this compatibility, RHEL should also be supported - just as it was for our CentOS versions.

#5

Hi all,

I’m currently running macOS and have recently been looking into how I can continue using Cubit using some sort of containerization. I’ve been able to get the Cubit CLI working in Docker, but I haven’t been able to get the GUI working yet unfortunately.

I’ve been trying to modify the Dockerfile based on the ones posted here and here. However, these two examples use CentOS, which will also be discontinued at the end of the year.

Would you happen to have some Ubuntu-based Docker image on hand that can be used to run the Cubit GUI?

#6

Here’s an example that should work on Ubuntu 22.
ubuntu22-gui.zip (1.6 KB)

It contains a Dockerfile and supervisord.conf to run a SSH server and a X11 server, available over VNC on port 5901. You’ll need to create a SSH key pair and put the id_rsa.pub next to the Dockerfile before building the image.

1 Like
#7

That’s awesome, thank you so much @scot! I’ll give that a shot :slightly_smiling_face:

#8

Thanks again @scot for providing that previous Dockerfile — that was extremely helpful, especially for nailing down the required dependencies. I’ve made a few changes to the one you shared previously and figured I’d post it here in case it’s useful for anyone else.

This image specifically sets up everything required for using a floating license within the Docker container. It also uses xpra instead of running a traditional X server so that using an SSH key isn’t required for connecting from the client to the Docker container. The Cubit GUI can then be viewed from within a regular web browser at the specified port number.

NOTE: The resulting Docker image here is pretty big (around 6.5 GB), so just keep that in mind when if making changes to the Docker image :wink:

Here’s the Dockerfile I’m using to do this:

FROM ubuntu:latest
SHELL ["/bin/bash", "-i", "-c"]

# Change these depending on what version of Cubit to download
ARG COREFORM_VERSION=2024.8
ARG CUBIT_URL=https://f002.backblazeb2.com/file/cubit-downloads/Coreform-Cubit/Releases/Linux/Coreform-Cubit-2024.8%2B52155-Lin64.tar.gz

# Set a few variables
ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
ARG DUMMY_USER=coreform
ARG COREFORM_FILENAME=Coreform-Cubit-${COREFORM_VERSION}.tar.gz

RUN apt update && \
    # For downloading and installing zipped files
    apt-get install -y curl bzip2 && \
    # Cubit dependencies
    apt-get install -y xfce4 net-tools fonts-liberation x11vnc \
    libxkbcommon-x11-0 libxcb-randr0 libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-xkb1 \
    libxcb-render-util0 libxcb-icccm4 libxcb-image0 libxcb-keysyms1 novnc \
    python3-websockify supervisor python3 libglu1-mesa libgl1-mesa-dri strace && \
    # xpra along with dependencies
    apt-get install -y xvfb xpra && \
    # For debugging
    apt-get install -y x11-apps vim

# Set up dummy user
RUN useradd --create-home --shell /bin/bash $DUMMY_USER
USER $DUMMY_USER
WORKDIR /home/${DUMMY_USER}

# Add Cubit to the image
RUN cd /home/${DUMMY_USER}/ && \
    curl ${CUBIT_URL} -o ${COREFORM_FILENAME}
RUN tar -xvzf /home/${DUMMY_USER}/${COREFORM_FILENAME} && \
    rm /home/${DUMMY_USER}/${COREFORM_FILENAME}

# Allow for the EULA to be accepted automatically
RUN mkdir /home/${DUMMY_USER}/.config && \
    mkdir /home/${DUMMY_USER}/.config/Coreform && \
    touch /home/${DUMMY_USER}/.config/Coreform/Cubit.ini && \
    echo "[clarofw]" >> /home/${DUMMY_USER}/.config/Coreform/Cubit.ini && \
    echo "eula=true" >> /home/${DUMMY_USER}/.config/Coreform/Cubit.ini

# Floating license details for Cubit
RUN cd /home/${DUMMY_USER}/Coreform-Cubit-${COREFORM_VERSION}/bin/licenses && \
    touch remote.lic && \
    echo "HOST host.docker.internal ANY 5053" >> remote.lic && \
    echo "ISV csimsoft" >> remote.lic

# Add the Cubit binary to the path
RUN echo 'export PATH="/home/'${DUMMY_USER}'/Coreform-Cubit-'${COREFORM_VERSION}'/bin:$PATH"' >> /home/${DUMMY_USER}/.bashrc

# Start the xpra session and launch Cubit
CMD xpra start --start="coreform_cubit -display :0" --bind-tcp=0.0.0.0:8080 --html=on --daemon=no --start-env='DISPLAY=:0' && tail -f /dev/null

This can be built by navigating to the directory where the Dockerfile is located and then running:

docker build -t coreform_cubit .

The container itself can then be started with

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 coreform_cubit

Opening a browser and putting localhost:8080 into the search bar allows for one to interact with the Cubit GUI :slight_smile: