Attempt to bring OS X apps to Linux springs back into action
New life has been breathed into a project to make Apple OS X programs run on Linux-based operating systems.
The Darling project is beginning to see new activity on GitHub after months of dormancy and the website has moved to a new address DarlingHQ.org.
Similar to how Wine allows Windows applications to run on Linux OS the Darling project is trying to build a software compatibility layer to run OS X apps.
The Darling translation layer can currently run a number of OS X console tools and applications, such as Midnight Commander, and some simple GUI applications with the help of the GNUstep project.
According to the site the aim of the Darling project is to provide "a dynamic loader that can load OS X executables (Mach-O)", "runtime, system library and framework reimplementations to enable OS X executables to functions" and "additional tools to assist with application installation".
Currently Darling won't run many OS X apps, as the lead developer Luboš Doležel puts it on the project website "there is a lot of work ahead of us, but not so much to have usable results".
For developers and software engineers that want to help out with the Darling Project Doležel has produced a list of what needs doing including better Mach system call implementation; writing more test programs to ensure the libc and BSD APIs are well covered and Core Audio implementation.
Doležel says the project is not violating Apple licensing agreements as no part of the project contains code covered by Apple's EULA. He recommends not using Darling to run something covered by Apple's EULA and to also avoid any APSL-licensed code.
The name Darling is derived from Darwin, which forms the core operating system components of OS X, and Linux.
More details about the project are available on the Darling project website and the code for the project in this GitHub repository.