MAC OS X connection to FreeBSD?

[Chuck Remes]

On Nov 13, 2006, at 7:02 PM, Lorin Lund wrote:

>
>>
>>> The biggest problem with MacOS X is that a lot of UNIX software that
>>> runs on FreeBSD and such, is not ported to MacOSX, and it's very
>>> difficult to compile on MacOSX.
>>
>> This is completely wrong. Take a look at macports [1] (formerly  
>> darwinports) for a large repository of UNIX software that compiles  
>> very cleanly on OSX. It's nearly 7 years since OSX shipped to the  
>> public. In that time, most opensource software was updated to  
>> compile cleanly on OSX. The primary changes to allow this were to  
>> the "configure" scripts so they recognize darwin as a base OS. If  
>> other patches were necessary, most software maintainers accepted  
>> these patches back into their trunk.
>>
>> OSX has excellent support for most UNIX software.
>>
>> cr
>>
>> [1] macports.org
>
> In trying to compile A+ (see aplusdev.org) I had a few problems  
> getting
> it compiled
> for FreeBSD (Because the A+ code was using the wrong macro to identify
> FreeBSD)
> But my efforts to compile the latest version for OS X.3 PPC have  
> brought
> out errors
> that look like compiler errors.
>
> In my view porting to the MAC is harder (though I very much wish it  
> weren't)

POSIX compliance got much better with the 10.4 (Tiger) release. If  
you are still targeting 10.3 (Panther) then there may be some issues.  
The 10.3 release is over 2 years old now.

Also, please recall I said "most software" and not 100% of software.  
I am certain there are outliers that don't compile cleanly on OSX,  
but that hardly proves that OSX is not a good UNIX target. The vast  
majority of software compiles and runs just fine on the latest OSX  
release.

cr