apple/darwin-xnu on Hacker News

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu Apple stopped updating this 5 years ago. I remember getting it to boot once long ago but I didn't have anything to actually do with it.

comment by colechristensen · 2026-05-02 · in How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

…externalization are big... [0] https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/04/byte-order-fallac... [1] https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/main/EXTERNAL_HEADE...

comment by nyrikki · 2026-04-03 · in Big-Endian Testing with QEMU

…it wasn't strictly based on the Lite2 release. Take a look at XNU 123.5's (OS X 10.0) kern/tty.c: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/xnu-123.5/bsd/kern/... Notice the SCCS version info dates the file 1/21/94. Now look at the Lite2…

comment by spijdar · 2026-02-23 · in Linuxulator on FreeBSD Feels Like Magic

…lver56k/Darwin-0.3/tree/master/kernel-... and the first archived version of the MacOS X xnu kernel at https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/tree/xnu-123.5/osfmk

comment by johndoe0815 · 2023-10-20 · in OS/2 Warp, PowerPC Edition

Apple has a bunch of stuff including Darwin up on GitHub. https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu -- I have no idea how current any of that is however.

comment by mattl · 2023-07-07 · in Poll: What does the term “open source” mean?

> Update: fortunately there's still Mac OS. Go download the source for Darwin.. https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu Compile it. Install it on your MacBook. Tell us how well MacOS boots that kernel.

comment by FireBeyond · 2023-07-05 · in Red Hat Is Not Linux (2000)

Technially, the Darwin Kernel it uses is OSS https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by TGRush · 2022-12-16 · in Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?

…DON'T redistribute it. And that's why google forbids the use of AGPL internally. >You mean macOS? https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu Why dont you know that? If your a apple user and so interested in opensource?

comment by nix23 · 2022-12-14 · in FreeBSD, Linux, and I

…Quartz, there would be no GUI left. If that's what you want, then there is Darwin out there. https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu There have been various efforts to make it run as a standalone OS with X11: • Pure Darwin:…

comment by lproven · 2022-10-24 · in BSD-XFCE installs macOS-like XFCE enviroment on FreeBSD

Per the documentation ( https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/main/bsd/kern/sys_u... ), it looks like ulock_wait might be one of the XNU primitives that supports os_unfair_lock.

comment by cbsmith · 2022-10-10 · in Improving Firefox Responsiveness on macOS

…introduced __ulock_wait2 and migrated code paths (notably pthread_cond_t) towards it: // https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/commit/d4061fb0260b3ed486147341b72468f836ed6c8f#diff-08f993cc40af475663274687b7c326cc6c3031e0db3ac8de7b24624610616b…

comment by Jarred · 2022-10-10 · in Improving Firefox Responsiveness on macOS

…source code: > // For information about the following undocumented flags and functions see > // https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/main/bsd/sys/ulock.... and > // https://github.com/apple/darwin-libplatform/blob/main/privat...

comment by lapcat · 2022-10-10 · in Improving Firefox Responsiveness on macOS

…for XNU, the current incarnation of Apple's microkernel is available as part of the Darwin stuff: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by cayleyh · 2022-10-04 · in Ask HN: Examples of Microkernels?

…available, so might not be what you're looking for. It is available, and it's called darwin-xnu: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu a mix of Mach and a FreeBSD kernel: https://i0.wp.com/www.linuxandubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/... And a…

comment by nix23 · 2022-10-04 · in Ask HN: Examples of Microkernels?

…but I'm not sure they are open for browsing, anymore. [0] https://github.com/apple/swift [1] https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu [2] https://developer.adobe.com/photoshop/api/

comment by ChrisMarshallNY · 2022-09-11 · in Ask HN: What's the best source code you've read?

…This doesn't seem to be documented explicitly, but is somewhat revealed by this printf(): https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/main/bsd/nfs/nfs_vf... > Besides, how many FUSE filesystems implement FORGET? Any file system that wants to…

comment by EdSchouten · 2022-09-05 · in Userspace FUSE for macOS

> with their 128 kB data cache Bigger than that. ( https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/2ff845c2e033bd0ff64... ) /* I-Cache, 256KB for Firestorm, 128KB for Icestorm, 6-way. / / D-Cache, 160KB for Firestorm, 8-way. 64KB for Icestorm,…

comment by my123 · 2022-04-22 · in What's new in CPUs since the 80s? (2015)

The code you're probably thinking of actually has a mach lineage. https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/main/osfmk/x86_64/p...

comment by tedunangst · 2022-04-09 · in Bill Jolitz has died

…address space is shared by the components though, which leads many to call it monolithic. [2] 1. https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/tree/main/osfmk 2. https://flylib.com/books/en/3.126.1.67/1/

comment by dippersauce · 2022-01-21 · in Linux kernel heap buffer overflow in fs_context.c since version 5.1

The recent (6 months ago) XNU kernel can still be compiled. Instructions are part of the GitHub repo: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by gilgoomesh · 2022-01-18 · in Hello Mac OS X Tiger

…anyway. Everything done with ObjC can be done in C if the developer is feeling adventurous enough. https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu C 82.5% C++ 8.7% Python 2.3% Roff 2.3% Assembly 1.4% HTML 1.1% Other 1.7%

comment by guessbest · 2021-12-14 · in About the security content of macOS Monterey 12.1

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by TravelPiglet · 2021-11-21 · in LLVM relicensing update and call for help

…(not to mention that Apple's own MACF framework seems to take the place of jails in the code -- see https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/main/bsd/kern/kern_... vs https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/sys/kern/ke... )

comment by spijdar · 2021-09-08 · in Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

…it also borrowed some things from FreeBSD, but I don't think they incorporated jails[1]. [1] https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/search?q=jail

comment by takeda · 2021-09-06 · in Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

…(used to) do exactly the same thing. See `OSMetaClassDefineReservedUnused` in `OSObject.cpp`, here: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/main/libkern/c++/OS...

comment by nielsbot · 2021-08-31 · in Implementing a class with void*

kernel_task is "real", but yeah, part of its responsibility is issuing NOOPs for thermal control: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/main/osfmk/kern/thr...

comment by bhj · 2021-07-04 · in What should the CPU usage be of a fully-loaded CPU that has been throttled?

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by hrrsn · 2021-06-08 · in Jailbroken iOS can't run macOS apps. I spent a week to find out why

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/8f02f2a044b9bb1ad95...

comment by saagarjha · 2021-05-24 · in CPU Bugs (2018)

…FreeBSD. Even the syscall interface is from FreeBSD. Here's a diagram of macOS architecture[3]. [1] https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu [2] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da... [3]…

comment by heavyset_go · 2021-04-06 · in Apple Donated $100-$249 to FreeBSD in 2021

…of interest, these performance events (and the whitelist for this API), are described by Apple at https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/main/osfmk/arm64/kp... Instruments.app is the official way to access performance counters. I believe…

comment by dougall · 2021-03-25 · in Counting cycles and instructions on the Apple M1 processor

…you don't get access to the google nor the sony "magic" development. BTW: Darwin is opensource: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by nix23 · 2021-03-19 · in FreeBSD 13.0 – Full Desktop Experience

…but a quick grep reveals plenty of references to "AIC" and "FIQ", in osfmk/arm64 for example. https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by Reason077 · 2021-01-21 · in How We Ported Linux to the M1

The kernel source is here[1]. I don't see any hardware drivers there. [1]: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by londons_explore · 2021-01-11 · in iPhone 7 with dead NAND netbooting unmodified Ubuntu 20.04 via USB ethernet

Indeed. Git repo at https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu . Note that that is 2 years behind. You can get a newer source dump from https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-6153.141.1/ . So, open source, but development isn’t done in the…

comment by Someone · 2020-11-29 · in Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

…obviously, people won't be able to install a custom kernel even if patches did exist for it. [0] https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by herpderperator · 2020-11-27 · in Running Docker on Apple Silicon M1 (Follow-Up)

…and see how it runs. I'm not sure if there's a way to change bootargs on M1 Macs, though. [1]: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/a449c6a3b8014d9406c... [2]: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/a449c6a3b8014d9406c...

comment by sirn · 2020-11-25 · in Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

XNU, Darwin's kernel, is Mach + FreeBSD[1]. [1] https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by heavyset_go · 2020-11-22 · in Linux on iPad

iOS is just BSD/Mach with an iOS Userland. Here is the kernel: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by zepto · 2020-11-22 · in Linux on iPad

iOS kernel is Darwin, a current BSD: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by zepto · 2020-11-22 · in Linux on iPad

Ummm... iPhones? iOS and macOS share almost completely the same kernel ( https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu ).

comment by snazz · 2020-03-20 · in The 2020 MacBook Air

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blame/a449c6a3b8014d9406... It's been there for 11 years in this repo. Along with DECnet. Suppose there's no real drive to remove it.

comment by mjlee · 2020-03-12 · in How Google Code Search Worked (2012)

…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…

comment by danieldk · 2020-01-21 · in FreeBSD is an amazing operating system

…http://newosxbook.com/src.jl?tree=xnu-1504.15.3&file=/bsd/sy... seems interesting. On the other hand, https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/0a798f6738bc1db0128... is suggested to be a red herring because of…

comment by exikyut · 2020-01-13 · in Bug #915: Please help

…There is not even a proper repository with version history, as far as I can tell. Just this stuff: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/commits/master That's literally a code dump.

comment by pnako · 2019-11-27 · in A Look at PureDarwin – An OS Based on the Open Source Core of macOS

Others have already mentioned clang. Apple also open sourced their kernel for iOS/MacOS https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by acchow · 2019-09-17 · in MSVC's implementation of the C++ Standard Library

It's also mirrored on Github! [1] [1]: http://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

comment by keehun · 2019-09-05 · in Mach kernel

…But if something was found in here, for instance, everything would be practically compromised: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/master/bsd/netinet/...

comment by snazz · 2019-08-08 · in Apple Confirms $1M Reward for Anyone Who Can Hack an iPhone

…redacting code? The XNU kernel (used in macOS and iOS) is open-source and has been for some time: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu My reading of the article was that Apple has some custom logic in the A12 (for the implementation of the…

comment by profquail · 2019-02-24 · in Examining Pointer Authentication on the iPhone XS

The macOS kernel has lots of BSD bits in it [1], it's not a classic microkernel in that sense. [1] https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/tree/master/bsd

comment by lukeh · 2018-11-11 · in iSH – A Linux shell on iOS

Pretty sure it was introduced here: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/commit/c10988c130af09087... In this commit a bunch of code was copy-pasted from BSD into ip_icmp.c in icmp_error() to quote IP packet data in icmp error responses.…

comment by geogriffin · 2018-11-01 · in Kernel RCE in iOS/macOS with ICMP