6 ms·

So is it a totally new story that iOS kernel is open sourced?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cucumberferity 9y ago
It's a story that (a) the iOS bits are included and (b) it's posted to GitHub instead of dumped at opensource.apple.com. We'll see if Apple accepts pull requests.
- earenndil 9y ago
  I doubt they will. Actual commits aren't going to github, just version snapshots.
  - cucumberferity 9y ago
    That's frustrating.
    - crawshaw 9y ago
      Github is nice, but there is (and should be) far more to the open source world than just Github. I am happy they are making sources available. It would be wonderful if Apple started developing their kernel in public (I would like to read those code reviews). What tools they use should be up to the developers.
      - josteink 9y ago
        I think he refers to the fact that we don't get the real version history, with informative commits which may provide context for the code in question, but instead just get snapshots for particular versions. I'm not saying it's useless, but it's certainly much less useful than a proper version-history, and very much a declaration that it is in no way intended to be a collaborative project. But I guess that shouldn't surprise anyone either. It's Apple, after all.
        smitherfield 9y ago
        Apple's made some pretty big genuine contributions to open-source: WebKit, LLVM[1]/clang, Swift, OpenCL.[2] [1] Yes, technically "not Apple" in the sense that Node.js isn't Joyent. [2] Admittedly partial credit at best since they've orphaned it in favor of their proprietary Metal API. I'd guess however that Metal will get open-sourced pretty soon.
        bemused 9y ago
        webkit was based on khtml (LGPL) - not much of a choice for apple
        smitherfield 9y ago
        They could've written a rendering engine from scratch, or (in 2001-2002) acquired Netscape or Opera for a song.
        Fnoord 9y ago
        Did Apple have a lot of cash in 2001/2? IIRC that is before the iPod hype.
        gsnedders 9y ago
        For a long time, they just did source-code dumps whenever they made a binary release (i.e., did what is required by the LGPL). They actively chose to move it to being run as an open-source project, with public history, public bug tracking, and public contributions.
mindcrash 9y ago
No, because this thing, darwin-xnu AKA the OSX/iOS microkernel, was already opensourced through https://opensource.apple.com/ https://opensource.apple.com/ for both iOS and OSX (to be precise, the source tarballs can be found here: https://opensource.apple.com/tarballs/xnu/ https://opensource.apple.com/tarballs/xnu/) What is new however is that Apple is now seemingly actively using GitHub to publish their opensource contributions.
- JimDabell 9y ago
  Apple using GitHub isn't new, they've been doing it for at least a couple of years. ResearchKit was their first GitHub repository I think.
  - AlphaSite 9y ago
    Isn’t it Swift?
- lobster_johnson 9y ago
  Minor correction: XNU is not a microkernel.
  - fnj 9y ago
    XNU is a hybrid kernel incorporating large elements of Mach (microkernel) as well as BSD (monolithic kernel).
    - atombender 9y ago
      The term "hybrid" is not a particularly useful concept, since the whole idea of a microkernel is to achieve stability and extensibility by placing only a minimal kernel in kernel space, and have everything else (drivers, file system, etc.) live in userland. XNU is built on Mach (initially 2.x back when it was NeXTStep/OpenStep, later 3.0 for OS X), but everything runs in a single address space. Mach ports are retained throughout the OS as a communication mechanism, including userland, but all the core stuff is in the kernel, and Apple has transitioned many Mach port IPC responsibilites to more traditional syscalls to work around the fact that ports are comparatively slow. For example, all POSIX operations such as read and write are BSD syscalls that correspond to entrypoints in the kernel; they're not IPC messages.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

It's a story that (a) the iOS bits are included and (b) it's posted to GitHub instead of dumped at opensource.apple.com. We'll see if Apple accepts pull requests.

earenndil 9y ago
I doubt they will. Actual commits aren't going to github, just version snapshots.
- cucumberferity 9y ago
  That's frustrating.
  - crawshaw 9y ago
    Github is nice, but there is (and should be) far more to the open source world than just Github. I am happy they are making sources available. It would be wonderful if Apple started developing their kernel in public (I would like to read those code reviews). What tools they use should be up to the developers.
    - josteink 9y ago
      I think he refers to the fact that we don't get the real version history, with informative commits which may provide context for the code in question, but instead just get snapshots for particular versions. I'm not saying it's useless, but it's certainly much less useful than a proper version-history, and very much a declaration that it is in no way intended to be a collaborative project. But I guess that shouldn't surprise anyone either. It's Apple, after all.
      - smitherfield 9y ago
        Apple's made some pretty big genuine contributions to open-source: WebKit, LLVM[1]/clang, Swift, OpenCL.[2] [1] Yes, technically "not Apple" in the sense that Node.js isn't Joyent. [2] Admittedly partial credit at best since they've orphaned it in favor of their proprietary Metal API. I'd guess however that Metal will get open-sourced pretty soon.
        bemused 9y ago
        webkit was based on khtml (LGPL) - not much of a choice for apple
        smitherfield 9y ago
        They could've written a rendering engine from scratch, or (in 2001-2002) acquired Netscape or Opera for a song.
        Fnoord 9y ago
        Did Apple have a lot of cash in 2001/2? IIRC that is before the iPod hype.
        gsnedders 9y ago
        For a long time, they just did source-code dumps whenever they made a binary release (i.e., did what is required by the LGPL). They actively chose to move it to being run as an open-source project, with public history, public bug tracking, and public contributions.

mindcrash 9y ago

No, because this thing, darwin-xnu AKA the OSX/iOS microkernel, was already opensourced through https://opensource.apple.com/ https://opensource.apple.com/ for both iOS and OSX (to be precise, the source tarballs can be found here: https://opensource.apple.com/tarballs/xnu/ https://opensource.apple.com/tarballs/xnu/) What is new however is that Apple is now seemingly actively using GitHub to publish their opensource contributions.

JimDabell 9y ago
Apple using GitHub isn't new, they've been doing it for at least a couple of years. ResearchKit was their first GitHub repository I think.
- AlphaSite 9y ago
  Isn’t it Swift?
lobster_johnson 9y ago
Minor correction: XNU is not a microkernel.
- fnj 9y ago
  XNU is a hybrid kernel incorporating large elements of Mach (microkernel) as well as BSD (monolithic kernel).
  - atombender 9y ago
    The term "hybrid" is not a particularly useful concept, since the whole idea of a microkernel is to achieve stability and extensibility by placing only a minimal kernel in kernel space, and have everything else (drivers, file system, etc.) live in userland. XNU is built on Mach (initially 2.x back when it was NeXTStep/OpenStep, later 3.0 for OS X), but everything runs in a single address space. Mach ports are retained throughout the OS as a communication mechanism, including userland, but all the core stuff is in the kernel, and Apple has transitioned many Mach port IPC responsibilites to more traditional syscalls to work around the fact that ports are comparatively slow. For example, all POSIX operations such as read and write are BSD syscalls that correspond to entrypoints in the kernel; they're not IPC messages.