Re: usefulness of source
Re: usefulness of source
- Subject: Re: usefulness of source
- From: "David Leimbach" <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:24:09 -0800
On 2/23/06, Andrew Gallatin <email@hidden> wrote:
Rob Braun writes:
> I'm curious, it seems there are more people here enjoying gloating
> over those that were anxious for the source than there are people
> actually using it. And that's what I'm really curious about, has
> anyone found the source posted to be particularly useful?
I'm still anxious, since all I use is the xnu sources and it is
still missing.
I use the xnu sources mostly as a reference, but in the past it has
been nice to be able to recompile the kernel with prints, breakpoints
or assertions added here or there to enhance understanding of what's
going on.
I have also done this when I had more time to experiment. It was nice to be able to build my own xnu, run it under all of Mac OS X and look and see what happens.
Back in mid 2002 this was actually pretty feasible, now I'm afraid that the xnu source I get won't have all the pieces to do that sort of thing. Without standalone Darwin distributions and the ability to recompile the kernel, I've lost all of this capability.
This is a shame, I was hoping to bring some of my favorite linux/plan 9 features to Darwin too, like private namespaces though in all honesty, it's been much more of a pipe dream and the more I experiment with such things on non-Plan 9-like systems, the more it feels like a mismatch for Unix-like VFS (but now I'm digressing.)
Point is, we more technically savvy geeks even had *fun* with this stuff when it was more enabled. Now the only project we've got that's even close to like this anymore is Webkit, and I suspect that's because Apple really does need to get along with the KDE hackers for this to continue. Perhaps it's more of a political strength or a goodwill thing because they've chosen to work closely with that community (and have received bad press in the past about it too).
It makes me sad to not be back in the good old days (which apparently were even more good before I came into this picture) but time moves on, relationships change and the way I work with Mac OS X has as well. I've really gone back to linux and FreeBSD and other far more esoteric operating systems for my OS experimentation fun. Just as Apple seemingly left me behind, I've moved on as well.
I still think it's a bit of a shame but Apple's a business and needs to do what they think is right for them and their stakeholders first.
Dave
Drew
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