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Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

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Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#41

Post by swiley »

mikalv wrote: post #17
ori_b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only wayland was more mature, and the Linux world would have put down X11 once and for all, I would be back on Linux a long time ago :) I'm curious why Wayland changes things for you. X11 is warty as hell, but that's generally not something visible to the user. I don't go "Eww, they didn't bother framing the graphics message packets properly -- I'm going to use another OS".

Haha, well it's not only X11, but it's one of the main reasons. Other reasons are that for my usage and work, it just "works", no hours of configuration in dotfiles. Also it's convenient as a cross platform developer, since I can just crosscompile to Linux and Windows(mingw) via Docker. However, without the Mac, you'll have to break some licenses with a hackintosh. I think the project is cool, but in work related sit…

Kdrive isn't bad if you don't mind 100% framebuffer X (which is fast enough to watch videos, run vim, play old videogames and emulators etc)

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#42

Post by littlestymaar »

pjmlp wrote: post #32
jcelerier wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Metal is fine and supported by all relevant engines, thanks. thanks for the laugh

Professional game developers have a different opinion regarding graphics APIs, even those that have been strong OpenGL apologists in the past: "John Carmack: Its still OpenGL, although we obviously use a D3D-ish API [on the Xbox 360], and CG on the PS3. Its interesting how little of the technology cares what API you're using and what generation of the technology you're on. You've got a small handful of files that car…

> AAA studios already adopted Metal on their engines

Genuine question : Do AAA studio really care about metal ? Is gaming on Mac a thing now ?

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#43

Post by swiley »

pjmlp wrote: post #12
mikalv wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea personally I'm mostly fascinated with the semi microkernel architecture. I don't really mind that the rest is closed. And yea, I've suspected they lost some good people after seeing all the new security issues in the kernel the past years. If only wayland was more mature, and the Linux world would have put down X11 once and for all, I would be back on Linux a long time ago :)

I came to realize that for those of us that actually care about graphics programming, nice GUI tools and UI/UX, Linux world will never be the place to be. The majority of devs are happy having a replicate of PDP-11 experience, maybe with twm and tools like xdvi or xv. Those that try to improve the overall desktop experience closer to other desktop systems, get bashed as needless fluff.

I have been continuously let down by GUI tools with "Good UX" on every platform to the point that I honestly don't trust them to be well behaved and well documented any more.

I know it's technically possible to write a good GUI tool but if some tool doesn't have a fully functional CLI I immediately distrust it.

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#44

Post by bostand »

coldtea wrote: post #38
bostand wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if his observations are so far of the mark you can be pretty sure his stereotypes are too. By the way, visual studio and intelij idea look the same on all platforms

After 20+ years of "next year is the year of Linux on the desktop" (which is about Linux seriously challenging or even overtaking MS on desktop users, not just the "Linux works fine for me on my desktop" which was always the case for some outliers) and following Gnome and KDE closely, and efforts by Ubuntu etc and reactions, his observations sounds quite to the point.

Who cares about year of Linux?

I have never been as productive as I am now. No more fighting xcode or using outdated core tools.

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#45

Post by steeleduncan »

Is there a better approach for experimenting with filesystems than editing the kernel sources, recompiling and then running in a VM? e.g. A C library providing the necessary interface for the sources to drop into a kernel eventually, but also allowing you to run tests, set breakpoints, etc within an IDE.

Of course you can get a long way accessing a block device directly with FUSE, but ultimately you end up developing a FUSE library, not something you can use within the kernel.

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#46

Post by coldtea »

bostand wrote: post #44
coldtea wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After 20+ years of "next year is the year of Linux on the desktop" (which is about Linux seriously challenging or even overtaking MS on desktop users, not just the "Linux works fine for me on my desktop" which was always the case for some outliers) and following Gnome and KDE closely, and efforts by Ubuntu etc and reactions, his observations sounds quite to the point.

Who cares about year of Linux? I have never been as productive as I am now. No more fighting xcode or using outdated core tools.

>Who cares about year of Linux?

Apparently tons of people -- at least did.

>No more fighting xcode or using outdated core tools.

Well, if you don't need to use Swift/Obj-C or develop for Mac/iOS (which apparently you don't) then why use XCode at all in the first place?

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#47

Post by rsynnott »

littlestymaar wrote: post #42
pjmlp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professional game developers have a different opinion regarding graphics APIs, even those that have been strong OpenGL apologists in the past: "John Carmack: Its still OpenGL, although we obviously use a D3D-ish API [on the Xbox 360], and CG on the PS3. Its interesting how little of the technology cares what API you're using and what generation of the technology you're on. You've got a small handful of files that car…

> AAA studios already adopted Metal on their engines Genuine question : Do AAA studio really care about metal ? Is gaming on Mac a thing now ?

A good few of the major engines now support it.

Gaming on the Mac is a thing to some extent. See Steam for MacOS.

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#49

Post by nickpsecurity »

mikalv wrote: post #7
jarjoura wrote: post #6

XNU open source bits from Apple are always a tiny subset of the actual kernel code. Plus, long gone are the people who Apple hired from the FreeBSD world who believed in it enough to push internally for it. So who knows at this point what is filtered out at publish time. Don't get me wrong, it's great to read how file drivers really work, and read how XNU manages virtual memory, but other than that, it's a pretty cra…

Yea personally I'm mostly fascinated with the semi microkernel architecture. I don't really mind that the rest is closed. And yea, I've suspected they lost some good people after seeing all the new security issues in the kernel the past years. If only wayland was more mature, and the Linux world would have put down X11 once and for all, I would be back on Linux a long time ago :)

The merging of Mach with UNIX was a mistake given it was one of the slowest, over-complicated microkernels. Far as I'm aware, they'd prefer to remove Mach but it's a big job at this point that might affect their ecosystem a lot. If you are interested in open microkernels, I encourage you to look into L4 family (eg OCL4 or OKL4) since they're far more advanced than Mach-based designs. Minix 3 does one with NetBSD userland and self-healing capabilities. GenodeOS is turning one into a desktop. IBM's K42 ran on NUMA machines. JX OS mixes one with a JVM to run the OS in Java. For security, GEMSOS was a security kernel w/ MAC. KeyKOS and EROS were examples of those doing capability-based security. Modern ones like Muen and seL4 just do separation w/ apps managing security policy.

EDIT: Windows is also a "semi-microkernel" with a microkernel inside of it on the bottom that seems to be used for consistent way of interfacing components more than anything. I'm not sure if it's still in there.

Re: Building the XNU kernel on macOS Sierra

#50

Post by goldfire »

rsynnott wrote: post #47
littlestymaar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AAA studios already adopted Metal on their engines Genuine question : Do AAA studio really care about metal ? Is gaming on Mac a thing now ?

A good few of the major engines now support it. Gaming on the Mac is a thing to some extent. See Steam for MacOS.

Game engine vendors also care a great deal about iOS, since they have a large number of customers who do, so that's also driving support for Metal in those engines.
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