[ben-schaaf]

Just upgrading to 3.8 would drop support for a fair number of plugins - python is only somewhat source backwards compatible and not at all binary backwards compatible. As for why 3.3 is difficult to compile for macOS ARM, the 3.8 port is actually a fairly large changeset that would need to be back-ported and tested for 3.3.

[nly]

Are the plugins loaded in to the main ST process (using an embedded interpreter)?

A subprocess plugin architecture that used IPC to talk to the text editor would solve the problem, since the plugin host process could probably remain x86 and run under Rosetta.