Intel Based Macs and DMD?

[Anders F Björklund]

John Reimer wrote:

>> All I've seen for Mac OS X are *source-level* compatibility layers.
>> Not like http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/linuxemu.html
> 
> That was the case when Mac OS X was on PowerPC for sure.  But I was 
> hoping the linux-compat package would be popularized/fixed with the 
> release of Intel Macs.  From the googling I've done, though, it appears 
> that you are right about this.

I wish I wasn't. Such a FreeBSD-ish compatibility layer would have been
useful, now I have to dual-boot for running Linux on this Mac. (PowerPC)

Heck, I can't even access the ext2/3 *partition* in a stable manner...
(just experimental ways, like http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/)

> Yes, I know this, Anders. But it's not until Intel Macs came out that 
> this had any relevance for most people.  Darwin on Intel, as far as I 
> know, wasn't extremely popular.  Now it has raison d'être.

Darwin on PowerPC isn't extremely popular either, but having access to
the source code to (at least parts of) operating system is very useful.

Interestingly, Darwin on PowerPC always came with universal/fat tools
for cross-compiling to Intel, but tools on Mac OS X on PowerPC do not...

Well, didn't until Mac OS X 10.4 - which does have compilers for both.

>> * there are some wild such rumors flying around for Mac OS X 10.5,
>>   possibly even including Windows support (like the WINE project)
> 
> You mean something like this?
> http://darwine.opendarwin.org

Yes, but less buggy and more integrated :-)

Having Linux ABI *and* Win32 ABI for Intel macs, would be pretty neat ?
(i.e. without having to go through a "box" mode like VMWare/VirtualPC)

--anders