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Running Mac OS X Binaries With NetBSD
An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has an interesting article about an effort to add a Mach and Darwin binary compatibility layer to NetBSD. The project has evidently already made a fair amount of progress, currently working to stabilize the WindowServer emulation portion that will then allow NetBSD to run Mac OS X graphical applications."
That's great, really, but what is there to discuss? Now we can run apps from OS X on OS Y (my apologies), happy day. Next topic!
evil adrian
It's only the NetBSD/powerpc port. The biggest problem with MacOSX is that it only runs on Macs. If I'm going to pay all that money for a shiny new Mac, I'm going to run Apple's shiny new operating system.
Someone stole my old sig.
But one question: is there anything Apple can do to stop this?
If you remember, they've been *very* anal in the past about some things they consider to be "their stuff", such as the look and feel of the OS. I can't see them just sitting around and watching while all their OS capabilities are matched (or, for that matter, exceeded).
If they sent C&D letters for freakin' themes, I doubt they'll just sit around while their API is emulated. They've show themselves to be rather devious, and I'd be a little worried if I was a NetBSD developer.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Oh now look what you did: You woke the swarming team of Apple lawers on a beautiful sunday morning. They're going to be extra pissed.
_______
2B1ASK1
Or should that me...of course NetBSD runs it? Whew...imagine the possibilities. NetBSD runs on next to anything, and can run binaries in all those formats. /me installs NetBSD on his watch and tries to load Mail.app Dangit! Doesn't work. What crap is this???
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
to use this, since it is only binary compatability. So You will still need to buy PowerPC based computers. And who is one of the largest and most noted for selling powerPC based PCs... Apple Computer; so why not just run MacOS X?
I know you can buy third party PowerPC computer, but they are more expense than Apple's machines.
I do appricated their effort, it is probably a good exercise in programming skill.
It would be useful if it was on x86, but there are plenty of problems with that; see
http://www.emaculation.com/ppc.shtml
(This is not a flame, just an observation)
Accentuate the positive, don't waste your mod points on the negative.
What works?
On NetBSD/i386: nothing. On NetBSD/powerpc, most UNIX binaries, such as ls, sh, or vi will work. No Graphical User Interface (GUI) based program will work for now. We are able to startup WindowServer up to the first attemps to use the IOKit. See the kernel traces for WindowServer and for mach_init to discover how far we have been.
Here is what have been implemented so far:
Mach-O binaries loading
Mach system calls handling
Minimal Mach ports, messages and rights support, so that simple program are able to link and run.
Signals handling (except for siginfo) Minimal multithreading support
Support in ktrace/kdump to display Mach messages (useful for debugging)
Hacks to get mach_init starting (and to get it behaving as bootstrap mach_init)
Support for port rights carried by Mach messages
Here is what is in the TODO list:
Implement Mach notifications for destroyed ports, dead names, and no sender ports
Re-implement enough of Darwin's IOKit to get
WindowServer actually displaying something.
Use COMPAT_MACH for COMPAT_OSF1 (Tru64 binary emulation on NetBSD/alpha), to get multithreading working.
Get Darwin binaries to link and run on NetBSD/i386
Quite wrong. These guys are making a binary compatability layer, not emulation. You will not be able to run OS X applications on an x86 box running NetBSD, only a PPC box running NetBSD.
Running Gnustep on NetBSD? It has most of the NEXTStep/OS X libs already ported over to Linux (And therefore easily ported to NetBSD)...
GNUStep is already in the NetBSD packages collection, in several packages split across devel and x11. Install it along with WindowMaker and you've got a convincing NeXT clone ...
Chris
Mac-On-Linux
OK, it's not binary compatibility, but unlike COMPAT_MACH and COMPAT_DARWIN it does already work. But COMPAT_MACH and COMPAT_DARWIN are very interesting and worth keeping an eye on it.
Oh, BTW.... From the MOL-FAQ:
GNUStep allows for source-level compatibility. This is good for people who plan on targeting Mac OS X as well as Linux, but it's not good for people who want to run Mac OS X apps that run on Mac OS X but not on Linux, such as the Mac OS X window server and Finder. These applications would never be ported to GNUStep, as easy as it is, because Apple wouldn't do it. In addition, this should allow Carbon applications as well as Cocoa applications to run on NetBSD.
Um...I use MOL and have found it to be far from pointless. I use MOL mostly to run a FirstClass groupware client. The reason why I run Linux on a Pismo Powerbook is that I have an environment mostly identical to my x86 Linux machine at home. This means Linux largely frees me from worrying about underlying architecture (Wine and so forth aside). I have not found OSX to be so insanely great that I should blow away my Linux partition. Believe it or not there are good reasons to prefer Linux over OSX.
I have also found MOL to be far more reliable than Classic on OSX. Classic is much slicker in that OS 9 apps run directly on the Quartz desktop and one can cut and paste between apps. This also means it is more complex and therefore failure prone. My boss has no end of trouble with it. Classic icons go missing or change themselves into another apps icons. Some Classic apps will lock and won't release control to the Aqua UI. This means the machine is locked up for end user intents and purposes. Classic inflicts HFS metadata problems and some instability on OS X and kills much of OS X advantages if one has to make heavy use of OS <=9 apps. On the other hand if the OS 9 in my MOL sessions screws up then I can kill it and restart without affecting my Linux session. Since I boot my MOL session from an image I have an advantage normally only associated with virtual PC. If that boot image gets messed up, I can replace it from a backup quickly. Incidentally, MOL is very close to running OS X acceptably...eye candy and all.
MOL is can also be used as a user mode Linux. One can boot another acceptably fast Linux inside a virtual machine. This is useful for things like kernel development. MOL is far from pointless.
A question..
..it will not harm you!
The status report link is from 1/2002...
Did anybody bother to read it before posting?
70 people so far did not..
The actual project ot watch is not NetBSd..in that they don't have the nice Apple relationship like Darwin does..
In fact if my memory is right the proejct was stopped because they were duplicating Darwin's efforts..
To see if MacOSx will run under intel machines check Darwin porject site not NetBSD!
Come on People read once in awhile
Show yourself to better than those wintel geeks who don't even read but jsut spout what MS Gates wants..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Umm.... you could just buy a Mac and VirtualPC, then install Xfree86 in rootless mode. Seems like a simpler means to the stated end, considering that a Mac running Mac OS X is a "unix box".