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by sardon 2342 days ago
The Darwin kernel in OSX has more than userland code taken from FreeBSD. "The kernel of Darwin is XNU, a hybrid kernel which uses OSFMK (Open Software Foundation Mach Kernel) from the OSF, various elements of FreeBSD (including the process model, network stack, and virtual file system)" [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29
1 comments
pjmlp 2342 days ago
That was more true in the past.

https://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-Internals-Approach-paperback/d...

https://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-iOS-Internals-Apples/dp/111805...

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microtonal 2342 days ago
Could you explain this in more detail? It seems that the network stack, VFS, etc. from BSD are still heavily used?

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/tree/master/bsd

Also, more recently they imported pf from OpenBSD:

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/master/bsd/net/pf.c

Or do you mean that they have recently taken more code from other BSDs than FreeBSD?

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pjmlp 2342 days ago
I mean that they have been moving away into more macOS specific code.

The POSIX network stack for example, is now deprecated, and one must use Network.framework for the more up to date features,

"Introducing Network.framework: A modern alternative to Sockets"

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/715/

"Optimizing Your App for Today’s Internet"

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/714/

Likewise the long term roadmap introduced in Catalina plans to turn macOS into a micro-kernel, by moving all kernel extensions into userspace drivers.

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