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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."
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.
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2B1ASK1
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.
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.