FreeBSD and OSX applications

[Raphaël Marmier]

MacOSX applications need both specific libraries (based on the 
Openstep/Cocoa API) and a specific runtime system that runs objective-C 
based apps. While the API is open, the libraries (called frameworks) 
and the runtime are proprietaty.

Furthermore, these binaries are compiled for the PowerPC architecture. 
You cannot run them without emulating that hardware, unless you port 
FreeBSD to the PPC architecture.

Slightly off-topic, there is actually a port of the OpenStep API (and 
its runtime) to unix called GnuStep (www.gnustep.org) It aims at 
recreating the NeXT environment on unix systems. You can basically 
build program for both unix/gnustep and MacOSX from the same code, as 
long as you use features present in both (which is the case for 
standard Cocoa frameworks). Of course, if you try using Apple 
specific/proprietary API, you can't, at least not unless providing a 
replacement for them, which should be quite feasible if you have 
equivalent C libs on unix.

A good exemple is the GnuMail application, which runs on both from the 
same code base.

Raphaël

Le Mercredi, 30 juil 2003, à 01:33 Europe/Zurich, Rod Person a écrit :

> Today I went to an Adobe seminar. All demos where done on OS X. I kept 
> think that it looked a lot like KDE and of course I got to thinking...
>
> Can applications such as Acrobat and Illustrator run on FreeBSD? Since 
> OS X userland is based on FreeBSD it seemed to me there should be a 
> chance of it, is there? I'm think these would not be as hard, but do 
> to the MACH kernel on OS X, I'm not sure. Does anyone know? I also 
> wonder if this would work with Darwin either. But the last I tried 
> Darwin it would not run on my hardware. I'm I just crazy or is there a 
> chance of this?
>
> I also wonder is there a OS X emulator anywhere in the works or future?
>
>
> -- 
> Rod
>
> @ Home So No Cool Signature
> http://opensourcebeef.bsd.st
>
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