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XNU has always been open source, but not the iOS specific changes. There have been private efforts to compile it for ARM, but this is now officially supported i
by LeoNatan25 9y ago
XNU has always been open source, but not the iOS specific changes. There have been private efforts to compile it for ARM, but this is now officially supported in the public Apple source code.
- ngcc_hk 9y agoBut is this compilable and usable for a bare iron iphone or mac? Or even vm?
- LeoNatan25 9y agoNo, because the bootrom only boots signed software. For an emulator, this could be very interesting; if the bootrom is reproduced and drivers are compatible, it could theoretically work.
- cucumberferity 9y agoNot in it's current state. It's just a kernel. It's missing key components of the software stack to even make it terminal-only, let alone a GUI. There have been attempts through the years to create a full OS from the bits of OS X/macOS that Apple drops on opensource.apple.com. They do this by surrounding the kernel with FreeBSD or GNU software land, porting Xorg, and other components. See DarwinBSD, OpenDarwin, and PureDarwin. None of the projects proved sustainable in the long-run. It is possible that could change now though with better access to the code on GitHub. It's also possible we could see better drivers developed for hackintosh.