[HN Gopher] Darling Progress Report Q2 2023
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Darling Progress Report Q2 2023
Author : pantalaimon
Score : 70 points
Date : 2023-08-22 08:28 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.darlinghq.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.darlinghq.org)
| citrusui wrote:
| An excellent software project, preservation is a personal
| favorite ;). I had a look over the blog and GitHub project - but
| I have one important question that I could not find an answer
| for: "Which version of macOS is targeted?"
|
| I would assume only the latest or near-latest version, though it
| is mentioned in this post that they were only recently able to
| sync source code up to macOS 11.5 (from August 2021).
|
| My theories: either they aim to support a wide array of macOS
| versions (like Wine), or adopt a "moving target" approach,
| removing old code and stubs that handle old/removed Mac
| functions.
|
| I am leaning towards my second theory, as it was mentioned in
| issue #1337 (heh) that Darwin does not have a stable ABI. That
| sounds to me like an app built for 10.7 Lion would not run at all
| on 10.14 Mojave... something that is probably true for real Macs
| as well.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > That sounds to me like an app built for 10.7 Lion would not
| run at all on 10.14 Mojave... something that is probably true
| for real Macs as well.
|
| In practice, on real Macs, most apps built targeting 10.7 Lion
| will work on 10.14 Mojave. Some apps will be a bit buggy but
| still basically work.
|
| If you asked about 10.7 and Ventura, then I'd give it more like
| a 50/50 chance the app would work (possibly via Rosetta 2
| depending on your hardware).
|
| Backwards compatibility on macOS is quite bad, and it has
| gotten _much worse_ in the last few years in particular, but it
| 's not quite _as_ bad as some seem to imagine.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Captain Darling?
| zX41ZdbW wrote:
| We are choosing between Darling and using Mac instances in AWS
| for validation of ClickHouse builds:
| https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse/issues/15609
|
| The fact that Darling requires a kernel module makes it quite
| challenging to use. But the task is open, and I check it once a
| year.
|
| Overall I'm highly impressed that this is even possible!
|
| Also, I had another idea for builds validation - use a custom
| version of libc and compiler flags to make the API and ABI on
| Linux similar to what is on Mac. For example, to make uint64_t
| unsinged long long instead of unsigned long.
| monitron wrote:
| Good news: this article announces that the kernel module is no
| more, since last year apparently!
| acheong08 wrote:
| + 1. Been running darling off the server branch since it was
| made and have had 0 issues (at least none that was unique to
| it). My main complaint is that the go compiler doesn't work.
| jamesu wrote:
| Darling is a pretty impressive project. I checked it out a few
| years ago and was able to get an old 32bit osx program running on
| linux, which was pretty cool to say the last. The amount of work
| that goes into stubbing and reimplementing all the frameworks is
| pretty mind boggling though, I'd commend anyone who takes up such
| a mammoth challenge.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| I'm not sure who the intended audience is for this post, but if
| it's the general programmer audience I have several suggestions:
|
| 1. Explain what the project is right at the start. I had to go to
| the main website to find out (run macOS software on Linux.)
|
| 2. Follow with a high-level summary. What does all this work mean
| for the user? Can I now run more software than I could
| previously?
|
| 3. Put the most important things first. Is updating your blog
| really the most important thing you've achieved in the last four
| years?
| baq wrote:
| If you're like me and had 0 idea what Darling is a few paragraphs
| in: Darling is a translation layer that lets you
| run macOS software on Linux Wine lets you run Windows
| software on Linux, and Darling does the same for macOS software.
| [...] we finally have basic experimental support for running
| simple graphical applications.
| progbits wrote:
| What always annoys me about these blogs is that they have no
| obvious link to the main site, it all just goes to blog
| homepage which doesn't bother explaining itself.
|
| This is fine for personal blogs where I don't really care who
| you are, but it does for projects and companies. (And personal
| sites often prominently feature About page so it isn't even a
| problem)
| Someone wrote:
| I don't think it's obvious enough, but there is a GitHub link
| at top right of the page.
| progbits wrote:
| Good find. On mobile it is at the very bottom though.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| On desktop, there is actually a link named 'Main Site' to
| the right of the GitHub link.
| layer8 wrote:
| I agree, but it's also just a few keystrokes to remove the
| "blog." from the address bar.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Wine allows me to use "native libs" that means one can use
| windows dll's to improve compatibility. I successfully used this
| feature in the 90's to legally achieve great compatibility.
|
| Does darling allows the same? A have a Mac license which could be
| out to good use.
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(page generated 2023-08-22 23:02 UTC)