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NetBSD: Mach And Darwin Binary Compatibility

January 5, 2003 - 6:09am
Submitted by Jeremy on January 5, 2003 - 6:09am.
NetBSD news

Emmanuel Dreyfus recently noted that progress has been made with NetBSD's Mach and Darwin binary compatibility layer. Specifically, "WindowServer is able to talk with mach_init and it runs for quite a long time before crashing. Next steps are to fix the emulation bugs that cause WindowServer to crash, and then to re-implement enough of Darwin's IOKit to get WindowServer actually displaying something." (WindowServer being MacOS X's equivalent of an X server.)

According to the project's home page, "Once we will have a fully functionnal Darwin binary compatibility on NetBSD/powerpc (if that happens some day), we will just have to grab MacOS X libraries to run any MacOS X program, just like NetBSD is now able to run binaries from Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, and many other OSes." Learn more about binary emulation with NetBSD here.


From: Emmanuel Dreyfus
To: tech-kern, port-macppc
Subject: MacOS X binary compatibility status
Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 16:20:44 +0100

Hi folks

One step forward on the road to MacOS X emulation: WindowServer (The
MacoS X equivalent of the X server) is now able to talk with mach_init,
which works as a name server for Mach tasks. it crashes later, but at
least we are getting some Mach IPC working.

To avoid copy/pasting the information each time, I made a status page on
the web with some FAQ and their answers
http://hcpnet.free.fr/applebsd.html

And the usual message: this subproject is bottomless. Feel free to help.

-- 
Emmanuel Dreyfus


Related Links:

  • Emmanuel Dreyfus Interview (O'Reilly ONLamp)
  • Slashdot Discussion
  • NetBSD Documentation: Binary Emulation in NetBSD
  • DaemonNews: Getting into NetBSD - How to Help
  • Old News?

    January 5, 2003 - 9:13pm
    Anonymous

    The FAQ says it was last updated 2002/01/04. Hasn't
    anybody done anything since then? :-)

    Mac OS X Binary compatibility

    January 5, 2003 - 11:29pm
    Anonymous

    If we could run Photoshop or any of the commercial Apps this would be worth something, but to run X Window apps many people already offer their apps in a native format so this thing would be as useless as a snow shovel in Arizona.

    Re: snow shovels

    January 22, 2003 - 8:43am
    Anonymous

    You've never been to Flagstaff or the White Mountains, have you?

    Snow shovel: required.
    Skiing: possible.
    Snow? Every year.

    Next?

    question ?

    January 6, 2003 - 2:19am
    Anonymous

    I know this is not possible for the moment, but can we hope to run MacOS X on NetBSD/ix86 someday ?

    Sure!

    January 6, 2003 - 6:49am
    Anonymous

    Sure, shouldn't be all that much trouble... if you like running Mac OS X apps at the speed of President Bush's brains.

    at the speed of President

    January 6, 2003 - 9:33am
    Anonymous

    at the speed of President Bush's brains

    I hope running Mac OS X will be faster ...

    almost...

    January 6, 2003 - 7:06am
    Anonymous

    Darwin runs on i386. I'm told that the rest of MacOS X is not far off running on i386.

    So this may indeed be possible, but the apps will need to be compiled on i386 rather than powerpc.

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