'Instead of implementing all the 'system' APIs, it was sufficient to create simple wrappers around the ones available on Linux. 'This saved me a lot of work,' Doležel explained. The fact that OS X is a Unix operating system provides advantages in the development process. pkg files is underway.' Unix/Linux synergy dmg files under Linux directly and without root privileges. Because doing so isn't that straightforward, Doležel said, 'I've written a FUSE module that enables users to mount. pkg application files working on a Linux system. Users must compile Darling from the source code and then 'use the 'dyld' command to run an OS X executable,' Doležel said. I know it doesn't sound all that great, but it proves that Darling provides a solid base for further work.' Advertisement

'Such applications include: Midnight Commander, Bash, VIM, or Apple's GCC. 'These are indeed the easiest ones to get working, albeit 'easy' is not the right word to describe the amount of work required to achieve that,' Doležel said. Darling is in the early stages, able to run numerous console applications but not much else. by either directly mapping functions to those available on Linux, wrapping native functions to bridge the ABI incompatibility, or providing a re-implementation on top of other native APIs,' the project page notes.ĭoležel, who started Darling a year ago, described the project and its progress in an e-mail interview with Ars. 'Darling needs to provide an ABI-compatible set of libraries and frameworks as available on OS X. and execut them.'īut there is a ways to go. The name 'Darling' combines Darwin and Linux. Darling works by 'pars executable files for the Darwin kernel. Darwin is Apple's open source operating system, which provides some of the backend technology in OS X and iOS. 'The aim is to achieve binary compatible support for Darwin/OS X applications on Linux, plus provide useful tools that will aid especially in application installation,' Doležel's project page states. A developer from Prague named Luboš Doležel is trying to change that with ' Darling,' an emulation layer for OS X. There has been no robust equivalent allowing Mac applications to run on Linux, perhaps no surprise given that Windows is far and away the world's most widely used desktop operating system. Linux users who want to run Windows applications without switching operating systems have been able to do so for years with Wine, software that lets apps designed for Windows run on Unix-like systems.

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