macOS Compatibility Progress
Status: Not started (a two-entry translation table, no runtime) Last review: 2026-08-27
What exists
user/compat/macos/macos_compat.c, twenty-four lines, the same shape as the
Windows one: a syscall-number translation function knowing two entries, with
placeholder targets, incrementing a denied counter for everything else. Nothing
calls it at runtime.
Tracked here so that a file existing does not read as work having happened.
What "started" would require
- Mach-O loading, and with it fat binaries and two live architectures.
- The BSD syscall layer and Mach traps - ports, tasks, threads and IPC are not a translation of anything in this kernel; they are a different model of what an operating system is.
- dyld and the shared cache. macOS binaries are dynamically linked as a rule, and the system libraries they need are not distributable, which is the constraint that has no technical answer.
Pending
- Everything above. The docs have long said macOS support is deferred "due to complexity and ecosystem constraints"; the second half of that phrase is the operative one, and it is a licensing problem rather than an engineering schedule.
Next checkpoint
- None. This area is deliberately dormant and should stay that way until the native system and the Linux layer are considerably further along.