Darwin Team Answers & Develop on Darwin

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Darwin Team Answers & Develop on Darwin

Posted by Hemos on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @12:11AM from the and-the-leg-bone-connects-to-the-thigh-bone dept.

Lagos writes "In July Darwin developers at Apple had a call for questions. Their answers were posted on Monday and may be found here. There is some discussion of Apple's place within the Open Source community, though most of the questions answered are more technical." Along the same Darwinian lines, this submission came in: Maktoo writes "Maccentral is reporting that SourceForge.net has added PowerMac G4 Servers running MacOS X 10.1 into their Compile Farm. Now any apps you have going on SourceForge, you can test to see if it'll run on OS X! Gotta love that BSD heritage... OS X is already going to benefit greatly from all the apps it can use in the UNIX/Linux space. This just makes life easier for developers to bring even more."

21 of 152 comments (clear)

Bay Area NeXT Group. by jcr · 2001-09-26 00:15 · Score: 4, Informative

If you're interested in Darwin, and you live in the S.F bay area, come to the BANG meeting tonight at Apple Town Hall auditorium. The subject is Mac OS X 10.1, and Fred Sanchez will be there.

See http://www.bang.org/ for the details.

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
UMCP by SlamMan · 2001-09-26 00:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you interested in getting more OS X information in general, the Collge Park chapter of ACM is having a speaker from Apple today to talk about it. Its from 5-6, in the Classrom Building (yes, that actually is the name of one of our buildings), room 0111

--
Mod point free since 2001
1. Re:UMCP by himself · 2001-09-26 00:54 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  So is it really room 0111 or is it Room 7? (hee, hee)
Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by jcr · 2001-09-26 00:56 · Score: 4, Informative

The short answer is yes. Mac OS X is a full-blown 4.4 BSD lite OS.

It doesn't come with the X window system, but there are several commercial and free ports of X available.

The place to find information on apps for Mac OS X is stepwise.com. Click on the link that says "softrak".

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by winterstar · 2001-09-26 00:57 · Score: 3, Informative

OS X is mostly like any other UNIX. As long as you have the source code and can recompile it it should work under OS X in most cases.
Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by spike666 · 2001-09-26 00:58 · Score: 5, Informative

the simple answer: Sort of.
the real answer: it all depends...

the explanation: if you can compile it, you can run it. if its a command line program, you're porting compile is considerably easier. if its Graphical, you've got a bit harder approach since OSX uses Aqua - a graphical display system which has bases in display PDF (some *nixes GUI systems used to be based on Display Postscript - see Solaris' OpenWindows v1.x)

however, since i've yet to see a linux/bsd / solaris / aix application that uses aqua, if its a gui program its probably doing Xwindows. to run X on X, you gotta do some tricks, theres a few methods, but Darwin has ported XFree86 to X. it runs pretty well too.

what i've found is that the quickest way to get an aqua app running is to find a java version of the application if possible since the awt/swing -> aqua stuff is abstracted by the osx implementation of java. but this doesnt solve all your woes.
Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by Matthias+Wiesmann · 2001-09-26 01:07 · Score: 5, Insightful
The short answer is yes: OS X is a Unix variant - so you only need to recompile the software. In fact many tools of OS X are typical Unix programs, apache, perl, gcc, tcsh, etc...

The long answer is, it depends. While OS X is clearly Unix, there are some issues:
- OS X is from the BDS Unix familly, so linux programs might need some tweaking.
- OS X is structured differently from other Unixes, standart paths are different and configuration files are very different.
- Most Unix system use the X11 standart for GUI. OS X does not use X11 but instead a protocol based on display PDF. While it is possible to install an X11 server (for instance Xfree), this is not the default installation.
Still many Unix programs have been ported to OS X in the rather short timeframe of it's existence(~six months).
Question of the day... by gergi · 2001-09-26 01:16 · Score: 5, Interesting

Many people complain about Linux not being user-friendly enough in the GUI. Whether that is true or not is irrevelant to my question. Near everyone can agree that Apple has the best GUI. We're talking about how easy it is to port *BSD/Linux apps to OS X ... how easy do you think it would be for Apple to port Aqua to *BSD/Linux?

-As beautiful as KDE is, I would drop it in a heartbeat for Aqua.

--
Nosce te Ipsum
1. Re:Question of the day... by Matthias+Wiesmann · 2001-09-26 01:39 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Aqua is not simply a window manager and widget set you can install on top of a X11 server. It relies on a different drawing sub-system
  A simple port would imply rewriting the low-level IOKit functions for BSD/Linux and then recompile the foundations classes, and the Quartz rendering engine and then finally the Aqua layer. While it would not be very difficult, most of the code as been ported to many architectures. I suspect that a lot of work went into optimising Aqua for the PPC processor and the Atlivec unit. Aqua implies a lot of processing, and I would think that a straigtforward port would be very slow.
  
  Then again if Apple did this, they would roughtly have changed kernels, using the Linux/BSD kernel instead of Mach - what would be the point?
Potential danger by nahdude812 · 2001-09-26 01:30 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'm sorry if this is seen as flamebait, but isn't anyone else concerned that potentially all apps that run under Linux would migrate their way to another (commercial) OS with marketing power, and a desire to influence it? Couldn't this be a real threat to Linux? What if everything that ran under Linux suddenly started working under Windows? Wouldn't that reduce the marketability of Linux? If I were a corporation considering switching to a different environment, all be it a more stable one, when I only have people on staff who know the current environment, might I not be inclined to stay with the current environment given that the tools from the new one were available within the current one? Immediate costs would be reduced as there's less of a rollout, even if licensing in the long run is more expensive.

I think it's a great testament to Open Source that Apple chose to heavily base their OS on it; Apple decision makers aren't idiots, they know a good thing when they see it. But in the end, it takes a piece of the market owned wholly by *nices and allows a commercial entity to have a share of it.

--
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
1. Re:Potential danger by nahdude812 · 2001-09-26 02:44 · Score: 3, Flamebait
  
  OSX is about flexibility. Jobs knew that butting heads with Gates is a losing strategy, OSX is an end run. He is uniting the NIX world.
  
  Oh, I absolutely concur! It's a magnificent strategy for Jobs! Absolutely it will boost the market share of MacOS! But will it be at the detriment of Linux? Seriously, I doubt that this will pull many Windows users away, as the majority of them are set in their ways, and it isn't MacOS doing anything new that Windows does. Instead it is MacOS seeping in to a share of the market, and in fact, potentially completely blanketing it, that is currently proudly held by BSD/Linux, when they have greater right/authority/capacity to hold that share of the market, except for the fact that they don't have a marketing department.
  
  Why is Microsoft the big OS right now? Marketing! Is MacOS (pre-X) better than Windows? In very many ways! Is Linux better than Windows? Also in very many ways! Is Windows better than either of them? Not in very many ways at all! My brother just exceeded 400 days uptime on his home server running RedHat. On Netcraft, of the top 50 uptimes, last I checked, only ONE was Windows, and it was a machine run by Microsoft, with the express purpose of proving Windows' uptime capacity, and not a machine that was being used in a production environment. So why is this inferior OS in possession of the largest share of the desktop environment, with an inferior less stable environment that Linux, and a less intuitive, more difficult to use interface than MacOS? You better have guessed it by now (I'm such a cynic), MARKETING. MacOS is absorbing a lot of the strategic advantage of BSD/Linux, and inserting it into their marketing machine under the name MacOS.
  
  My concern is over whether this pushes BSD/Linux out of the picture, as they are about operational quality not visual quality while OSX focuses a lot more on visual quality (which has proven to be an exceptionally marketable aspect; translucent windows and a warping docking bar, wow, way better than some boring uptime!) and leaves the operational quality to the BSD programmers, who are pouring their hearts and souls in to a project, which Apple might, in the end, turn around and stab them in the heart with.
  
  Very loose simile: It's like the greatest swordsmiths (Open Source programmers) on earth collectively working for years to create the greatest sword ever for a king (the public, and perhaps Apple), who kills the smith with it to prevent the smith from making a better one. Your greatest source of pride might very well be your undoing in an irony that belongs in fairy tales. (This is not to imply that Apple has its goal laid out to squash BSD, indeed, BSD is proving to be a great aid to them, thus the loosness of the simile.)
  
  --
  Slay a dragon... over lunch!
2. Re:Potential danger by Snocone · 2001-09-26 03:02 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Hello... VHS vs Beta (tried, but true example of marketing versus quality).
  
  Actually, as usual, the conventional wisdom is wrong in their explanation. Beta was actually well ahead in unit sales until the rise of pr0n on VHS. No, really.
  
  See, to RECORD a Beta tape, you needed a Sony-licensed machine; very expensive. On the other hand, anybody could make a (comparatively) cheap VHS camera. And the numbers tell the story; when Beta and VHS had about the same number of titles available, Beta led in sales. About seven months after the first VHS cameras hit US shelves, VHS had six times as many titles available, of which not quite half were cheap pr0n flicks. And, needless to say, VHS piracy was rampant, while Beta piracy was next to nonexistent.
  
  Sales of the two respective systems, which until then had moved along similar trendlines, promptly diverged radically.
  
  Lesson to be learned from this: Technology adoption is driven by piracy and pr0n. As if looking at any contemporary P2P network hadn't made that clear to you already...
3. Re:Potential danger by dolanh · 2001-09-26 04:06 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  As of right now I don't see too much of a conflict, considering the products that MacOSX is encroaching upon are mostly positioned at the desktop market, whereas BSD/Linux main strength is still primarily on the server end.
  
  When BSD/Linux gets a stronger desktop following (I give it about two years), we could revisit your argument.
  
  --
  just my blog and pix
4. Re:Potential danger by NutscrapeSucks · 2001-09-26 06:31 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I just want to contradict the perception here that BSD sprung entirely from the 'great swordsmiths' of Open Source programmers.
  
  BSD UNIX was a US government funded project intended to advance the state-of-the-art for the computer industry as a whole. The entire intent was to allow commercial companies to 'steal' the code to improve interoperability -- in fact iconic BSD developers like Bill Joy got very rich doing just that. BSD code is used in virtually every OS -- it's a significant chunk of every commercial Unix, probably a bunch in GNU, and there's small bits in Windows, as has been repeatedly discussed.
  
  Not to take away anything from the people who deUNIXifed BSD and have been doing a excellent job maintaining it ever since. Just that Apple won't be the first nor the last to use BSD code in their OS. Compared to every other commercial user of BSD code, they've been saints.
  
  --
  Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Re:?question by JimRay · 2001-09-26 01:35 · Score: 3, Informative

Kind of. Darwin is actually the core of the new Mac OS, including a kernel based on Mach and BSD4.4 compatible Unix layer. Darwin has been released as open source software. It was built to run on PowerPc systems, all the way up the G4. However, the Darwing team has ported it to the x86. If you have a system that meets their guidelines, you can actually run Darwin on an x86, though I'm not real sure why you'd want to. Some have speculated that with a simple recompile and rewrite of some drivers, Apple could port OS X to the x86. Hope this helps.

Get more info here:
http://www.apple.com/darwin/

--
My other computer is your Windows box
To reward the developers... by Teddyman · 2001-09-26 02:06 · Score: 3, Funny

They should give Darwin Awards to the most hard-working of them.
Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by iso · 2001-09-26 02:10 · Score: 4, Informative

A lot of people are saying "it depends," but I'm not really sure why. Just about any UNIX app that will compile on *BSD (graphical or not) can run on OS X. Get XonX and you can run a rootless XFree86 port right next to the Aqua windows. Where does "it depends" even enter this? OS X is as much a UNIX as FreeBSD and Linux are, period.

The funny thing I've found however, is that after going to great lengths to install beta versions of XDarwin and hacking libraries to get them to compile (this was 6 months ago, all of this is much easier now), I found myself wondering what exactly to do with it. I put a lot of importance on running my old Linux apps, but when it came down to it there was nothing I needed to run under X! I used the Gimp for a bit, but then picked up a copy of Photoshop instead; Mozilla runs better under Aqua than X-Windows; Fire is a great ICQ client and I really like Apple's Mail.app for email; Microsoft Office for the Mac is hands down better than any UNIX clone (or even Office for Windows). The new Office for X looks phenomenal! Everybody using OS X should download the Word for X trial version and try it for themselves. StarOffice and the like don't even come close to this newest version of Word for the Mac. Amazing.

Sometimes I use the xterms in XDarwin just for old times sake, and it's nice to remotely connect to my linux box though the X Server, but what really struck me is how much better apps are in OS X than they are in Linux. Sure a lot of these apps aren't free, but I was never using them because they were free: I was using them because they got the job done well. Now I'm using no X-Windows apps, a handful of OS 9 apps, but the vast majority of the apps I use are OS X native. It's official, I'm a Mac convert :).

- j
Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by iso · 2001-09-26 03:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

Photoshop is major $$$. Why do you think so many Mac users have been interested in a GIMP port?

Well photoshop is available to students for only about $200, which is how I first bought it years ago. Anybody who isn't a student will have a job and therefor money, but even then one can still find photoshop for about $500, sometimes less if you pick up an older version and upgrade.

Add to all this the fact that the GIMP is useless for print, and if you're not doing print then you'd be better off buying Photoshop Elements for a mere $99. There are even upgrade programs to buy Photoshop Elements for as low as $70 if you have a copy of Photoshop LE (included with many scanners, and I've even seen it included free with magazines and at tradeshows!)

It should also be noted that while I've seen many Mac users interested in the GIMP (hey, everybody likes free stuff), I've run into exactly zero who were impressed by it when they finally got it running. The GIMP is a nice idea, but despite what many (ignorant) zealots preach, the GIMP does not, in any way shape or form, come close to the power of Photoshop Elements, nevermind Photoshop.

- j
Use whatever works for you by Anonymous Coward · 2001-09-26 03:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

If I was a foreman at a construction company, I wouldn't force the bricklayers to use hammers just because the carpenters are really productive with them. A computer is a tool. Use whichever one is right for the job.

Alot of my job revolves around web development. For me, OS X is perfect because I have Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, and vi all on the same machine. I tried to use Linux, but alot of my time was spent dual-booting.

You probably do other things, so another machine might be better suited for what you do. Whatever. Better or worse is all relative to what you want to accomplish.
So, OS X 10.1 has /dev/random now? by torpor · 2001-09-26 04:10 · Score: 3, Informative

From the FAQ:

Q: Porting Unix software to Mac OS X, one thing that is often sorely missed (especially in cryptographic tools) is /dev/random, a system-level entropy provider. Adding a decent /dev/random would be a Good Thing.
A: Although /dev/random is not in the latest Darwin binary release, it is now in the kernel sources available in the Darwin CVS repository. It took us a bit of time to release it because we wanted to be sure of its quality. Check it out and enjoy!

So does this mean that OS 10.1 has a /dev/random now, and I can chuck away the entropy daemon I've been using?

Anyone (early 10.1 users) know the answer?

--
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
1. Re:So, OS X 10.1 has /dev/random now? by znu · 2001-09-26 04:30 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Yup:
  
  [entropy:/dev] znu% sw_vers ProductName: Mac OS X ProductVersion: 10.1 BuildVersion: 5G64 [entropy:/dev] znu% ls | grep random random urandom
  
  --
  This space unintentionally left unblank.