apple moving to x86

[Stephen Hurd]

John Baldwin wrote:

>
> On Jun 8, 2005, at 10:30 PM, Stephen Hurd wrote:
>
>>
>>> As there is FreeBSD port to the PowerPC and its peripherals, this 
>>> machine will make a very interesting target for FreeBSD: combine the 
>>> x86 code base with the PowerPC drivers and get a real hot machine.
>>
>>
>> The *really* hot machine is going to be the OSX ABI supported under 
>> FreeBSD and running Aqua.  I betcha this happens FAST.
>
>
> I doubt it would be fast at all if it even happens.  Unlike Linux, 
> svr4, and ibcs2, OS X is not just a POSIXish UNIX kernel.  It also 
> includes mach so there would have to be a lot of emulation to support 
> that.  OS X also tends to define its interface not at the kernel 
> syscall level but at the library API level (from what I have heard), 
> which means that it might require having custom versions of the base 
> system frameworks ala Wine which would be an enormous amount of work.
>
But the ABI support is about emulating the kernel ABI, not about 
emulating the kernel.  Since the *nix userland is mostly FreeBSD afaik, 
the ABI must be pretty darn close already.  If the interface is via 
libraries, that makes it MORE likely not less to happen fast... unless I 
misunderstand something.  ABI emulation doesn't replace the libraries.  
You'd still need a copy of OSX to run OSX binaries that used the shared 
libs (Just like all the other ABI emulations).