Project Darling Is Still Trying To Run macOS/OSX Software On Linux

Written by Michael Larabel in Apple on 13 November 2016 at 11:19 AM EST. 35 Comments
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Back in 2012 I wrote about Project Darling as an effort to run Mac OS X software on Linux -- to Wine is for Windows software on Linux, Darling is for Mac software on Linux. Work on Darling seems to have picked up recently after a brief hiatus.

In late 2013 it looked like Darling development stalled but in January of 2014 was news the project had been refreshed. But that's the last time I had anything to report on the project until hearing recently from a Phoronix reader and saving it for an otherwise slow news day that Darling is in fact still under development.

The Darling Git repository remains active. As of writing this article there has been over 1,200 commits with the most recent activity being just from two days ago. The most recent code additions were adding an initial GDB JIT interface, adding a Ruby sub-module, and some documentation updates.

Darling is still progressing but in its latest state can not run any macOS GUI applications but rather only basic command-line apps with both 32-bit and 64-bit capabilities. From the Darling Shell there is support for working with DMG images and even using Apple's Xcode toolchain for compiling basic "Hello World!" type applications for macOS and running from a Linux system.

More information on the Darling project via the project site at DarlingHQ.org.

Four years in it can't run too much software, but are you looking forward to it and one day having Mac GUI apps on Linux? Do you see any need for running Mac software on Linux when there is Wine for Windows software on Linux? Share your thoughts on Darling with us by commenting on this article in our forums.
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Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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