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To someone not familiar with Darwin internals, are drivers bundled or is it possible to get binary blobs? Does this mean we can build an open source stack that
by nextos 9y ago
To someone not familiar with Darwin internals, are drivers bundled or is it possible to get binary blobs? Does this mean we can build an open source stack that could run on iPhone or iWatch?
- new299 9y agoWithout the ability to sign the kernel, even if you could build one you wouldn't be able to run it.
- thinkloop 9y agoThat's big, what's their purpose for open sourcing if not to allow developers to build on it?
- comstock 9y agoIt’s possible that this might help security researchers find/fix bugs. It may help other developers understand how iOS works. Overall, I think it’s unlikely to be hugely useful, in terms of actuallly using it for anything.
- newhouseb 9y agoA significant fraction of iOS/macOS/tvOS is now relegated to kernel extensions and this trend has only been increasing -- HFS+ IIRC is now in a (closed source) kext and APFS has been from the start. So while it's admirable that Apple is more actively using Github, this is by no means demonstrative of Apple open sourcing their crown jewels. Running a custom kernel on anything but macOS would still be a herculean amount of work.
- mrpippy 9y agoHFS is open-source, both the kext and utilities (fun to see that fsck is using code from the early 90s Disk First Aid). I built the kext for Sierra and it wasn’t too hard. https://opensource.apple.com/source/hfs/hfs-407.1.3/ https://opensource.apple.com/source/hfs/hfs-407.1.3/
- newhouseb 9y agoOh nice! I usually read the XNU sources that someone had previously mirrored to Github and had missed this.