I don’t understand this item listed under Long-Term Goals:
Build PureDarwin on BSD/linux.
Does this mean porting their not-yet-created desktop environment to a BSD variant and Linux? Are they planning to abandon the Darwin kernel, or do they intend to maintain their DE on three different kernel/library stacks?
Not sure. Maybe they’re going to replace the nasty proprietary bits with tools and libraries from Linux and BSD?
Maybe a similar approach to ravynOS? From ravynOS homepage:
We’re building familiar apps native to ravynOS, packaged as portable .app bundles and built with our core technologies of Cocoa, Qt, and Mach. These are guaranteed to work and fit seamlessly into your desktop.
Many FreeBSD ports and apps, Linux apps, and even trivial Darwin & macOS binaries can run on ravynOS. And we’re actively working on improving it!
Kinda. I hadn’t actually heard of ravynOS, so thanks for mentioning it. I’ll be interested to try it out.
The main difference, however, is the kernel. ravynOS is based on FreeBSD with Mach and Cocoa added on top, which is like creating Mac OS X from first principles. PureDarwin, meanwhile, is based on the already-developed Darwin kernel used by macOS, but with the proprietary bits hacked off and replaced with FOSS tools from other projects (as far as I know).
That sounds interesting, thanks for clearing up the differences, both definitely very promising
That’s sort of how I’m understanding it, they’re talking about the build process specifically and want to re-base their toolset to BSD/Linux. Not sure what their current build process entails but like you said it could be they’re currently stuck with some sort of proprietary / Apple specific software.
