[maqulator] FreeBSD running macOS binaries :-)

[Theron]

On 2/8/21 10:29 AM, Tomasz CEDRO wrote:
> The question is - if we can somehow run Linux and Linux64 binaries - 
> why don't we run macOS binaries???
>
> These are also ELF, macOS uses lots of FreeBSD stuff, and the packages 
> are self contained with all libraries, so it should be even easier 
> than running Linux stuff (that always has some dependency issues like 
> I am experiencing right now running closed-source FPGA toolchains).

Libraries are the issue.  Any native macOS program beyond a ported 
command-line util depends on one or more macOS proprietary libraries.  
Some of these are descended from NeXTSTEP, therefore some 
mac-compatibility concepts have discussed using GNUSTEP as a starting 
point, though there are large gaps in features by now.

A few projects over the years have gotten Mach-O/Darwin binaries to load 
and execute on non-Darwin OSes, but that is only the first step, and not 
useful by itself.

> Did anyone consider running macOS programs on FreeBSD?
>
> Do you know how good it would be to run macOS quality software on 
> FreeBSD and not really depend on Linux alternatives? :-)

Linux emulation is already working for several commercial programs while 
"desktop Linux" shares in common most of the libraries of a typical 
FreeBSD Xorg desktop installation, this already lends itself to better 
integration than you'll find from a *STEP or WINE compatibility environment.

On 2/8/21 10:29 AM, Tomasz CEDRO wrote:
> There is a nice QUCS [1] electronics simulation program (SPICE with 
> GUI that works out of thebox). It is based on QT4 so it was removed 
> from ports in March 2019. People use macOS binary with no problem.
> [1] https://github.com/Qucs/

This is already an open source project, looks like emulation/porting 
resources would better be spent on a QT5 migration or QT4 legacy port.