But, but, but...
Remember Rhapsody? Remember how, even having bought the excellent Next environment as a "new-gen" OS foundation, Apple could not persuade anyone - developers or users - to take an interest in where this might lead. The costs were too great, the hurdles too high, the future too uncertain.
Until Carbon. Carbon is a stop-gap. It's a porting-aid, a kludge which few developers prefer. Most aim to grow out of carbon into native OS X development in the fullness of time.
But kludgy though it is, Carbon is a life-saver. Before Carbon, there was no clear way for Apple and its developers to get to Rhapsody, and everyone knew it. I went to the sales pitches; I saw the hostile, unbelieving faces. With Carbon, suddenly there was a path, now leading to OS X. The day Jobs announced (and demoed) Carbon - was that WWDC 98? - was the day Apple stopped dying and had a publicly believable future.
Linux on Mac OS X isn't about function, it's about credibility. Even if OS X were to develop a Linux binary compatibility layer (and so far, none of you have said the notion is *technically* flawed) I doubt it would see much use. But what it would do is send a strong message of compatibility to the community at large, especially the business community. "All this, and Linux apps too".
So if Apple aren't working on this, they surely ought to be.
GWW
On 17 Dec 2003, at 00:45, Ed Murphy wrote:
I agree, there are many more important things than a binary compatiblity layer.
I think Fink does a fine job of making ports easier, so Darwin should have no
trouble getting native versions of apps. I was just trying to clarify what
Fink is and what it isn't. It's kind of nice to have the linux compatibility
layer in FreeBSD, but, like you, I don't really use it much. I'd rather have a
pony as well.
Ed
--- Peter da Silva <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Dude, I was one of the original 386BSD patch kit developers, you know, the
thing that became FreeBSD? I am aware of the difference between a compiled
and a binary app.
The original question was about running compiled apps on Darwin without
needing any recompile. So, for instance, running the version of Gimp
that has been compiled for YellowDog Linux directly on Darwin.
Why do you care? You can already get a native Gimp binary from at least
two places. I run FreeBSD, it's my UNIX platform of choice (sorry, Apple,
until I can get rid of HFS+ and you get standard UNIX tape support working
again you're no better than #3). The only Linux binary I run on FreeBSD
is the occasional Mozilla port. Everything else, including gimp, runs
native. And virtually all the time the only difference between a source
port and a binary package is how long it takes to install. What do I care,
I'm not there while it's happening... that's what multitasking's for.
It's not that I don't know the difference, I don't care about it.
A clearly defined and supported executable format, loader and runtime environment made this possible on PeeCees.
Well, um, that's not really true. There's quite a bit of binary incompatibility between Linux versions. FreeBSD has mostly tracked Red Hat in the past.
Do all versions (or most important
versions) of Linux on PPC use the same executable format etc.? If so,
it makes this kind of project feasible.
But is it desirable?
Before doing this, I'd like to get a UFS-HFS+ compatibility that exposed
finder info as macbinary forks and transparently stored them on non-HFS
partitions. I'd like to get tape support working. I'd like to get a better
partition editor, so you can split a partition without trashing the rest of
the disk and without havingto run some carbon port of a commercial OS9
utility. I'd like to get system call performance up. I'd like to get multiple
swap directories working. I'd like a pony.
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