pkgsrc on Mac OS X

Amitai Schlair

The NetBSD Project

What's strange about Mac OS X?

• Kernel: not BSD-like (affects kernel-aware packages such as LKMs)
• Userland:
• Was NeXT-like
• Is FreeBSD-like, yet diverges from that too:
• NetInfo, lookupd
• No user(8) or group(8) utilities
• launchd instead of rc.d (and more)
• By default, case-insensitive filesystem (HFS+):
• Cannot cvs co pkgsrc onto it
• But DISTDIR, PACKAGES, WRKOBJDIR can be on it
• Preprocessor: by default, behaves incompatibly from GNU cpp
• Has a libtool(1), but it's not GNU libtool
• Linker: not GNU ld
• No ldd(1); otool(1) does some similar things
• Object format: not a.out, not ELF... Mach-O
• Link with shared libraries by providing full path to installed library
• Dynamic shared object loading API: not dlopen(3)

How does pkgsrc accommodate?

• sysutils/user_darwin: key features of user(8) and group(8) sufficient for PKG_{USERS,GROUPS}
• pkgtools/rc.subr: enough for most pkgsrc rc.d scripts to function
• bootstrap/ufsdiskimage: creates mountable filesystem image containing case-sensitive UFS
• CPP_PRECOMP_FLAGS: induces GNU-compatible behavior in cpp
• Patches to GNU libtool have been merged upstream
• Mach-O-aware shared library (.dylib) PLIST handling in bsd.pkg.mk
• buildlink2's design was influenced by pkgsrc portability problems with OS X
• Wrapper scripts translate most common compiler and linker arguments as needed
• CONFIG_{GUESS,SUB}_OVERRIDE replaces outdated copies of platform-specific files in packages
• devel/dlcompat: provides compatibility dlopen(3)-style functions
• workarounds for individual packages to build and/or run

Where can we improve?

• Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) can optionally install onto case-sensitive HFS+. Works great with pkgsrc.
• Full clones of user(8) and group(8)
• A cross-platform way to integrate pkgsrc rc.d scripts into ${OPSYS}'s boot sequence
• Make it easier to track pkgtools/rc.subr from src
• Treat bootstrap packages as normal packages, and other bootstrap improvements
• Better support alternate compilers, such as IBM's xlC
• Steal package-specific OS X fixes from Fink and Darwinports
• Provide Mac OS X disk images of pkgsrc-current and pkgsrc-stable
• Provide binary packages in native OS X format
• Provide a Mac OS X native GUI pkgsrc browser
• Regular bulk builds

Discussion

• Issues on other platforms? Solaris, IRIX, AIX are some tough ones.

FIN