Jump to content

Possible To Port Mac Software To Linux?


BlueWyvern

Recommended Posts

Just wondering if anyone had any knowledge/experience with this... But I was wondering if it was possible to port Mac Software over to Linux for running natively.

I figure it would be more possible than porting a windows program over since Mac OS is vaguely BSD Based.

Thanks in advance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well from my experience developing mobile stuff, Apple has really closed off their platform so it turns to be harder to translate things than you'd think. I'm sure it'd be no problem to rebuild it on Linux though if you had the source code.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If its compiled from source and doesn't require proprietary MAC headers in any way(as in just standard C+ and console apps), then I don't see why not, but you aren't going to port say, iMovie directly to linux or something like that. There is no wine equivalent that I know of for running native mac software on linux, where there is wine for windows on linux and cygwin for linux on windows, I don't believe there is anything for MAC on other systems.

By the way, BSD != Linux, and MAC != BSD. MAC is partly based on BSD but is in itself, its own flavor of Unix. They are unix like systems, the MAC and Linux, but MAC is more unix than linux itself. The kernel and libraries for Linux don't natively run BSD programs either. They need to be recompiled and written for Linux. FreeBSD on the other hand will run most linux programs natively, but they do work to ensure cross platform compatibility, something I don't think BSD or MAC does internally. If there is something you need in linux that is on a MAC, find alternatives or buy a MAC.

Edited by digip
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mac OS X is a descendant of UNIX and BSD, though it uses the Mach microkernel.

Mac software is pretty hard to port out. As digip said, standard console C/C++ apps should be pretty easy, but unless you want to tackle GNUStep, anything written in Core Foundation, Foundation, Cocoa or any other of the common (or uncommon) Apple frameworks will require some serious rewriting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...