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#1
Just saw this in the dutch tech news.

a developer is started to make an opensource ios version that runs on arm7.
http://crna.cc/magenta_source.html

This could be kinda impressive if you ask me.

From the website:
Magenta is an implementation of Darwin/BSD on top of the Linux kernel. It is made
up of a number of kernel and userland components that work together. It is fully binary
compatible with iPhone OS 5.0 (as in, it uses the same binary format).

So far, it includes the following libraries:
* CoreFoundation
* libstdc++
* libobjc
* libc++abi
* libicucore
* libncurses

* As part of libSystem
* libmath
* libunwind
* libsystem_blocks
* libC

All libraries are compiled for vanilla Darwin, so nothing is compiled for Linux. The only
exception is libC (which resides inside the dynamic linker) as it serves as the main bridge
between the userland and the kernel.

The final goal is probably recreating the iPhone OS 1.0 stack. I think this is a pretty feasible
goal, considering the fact that there are so many open source libs that can be used to replace
the proprietary libs used by Apple. Just as an example:
* CoreGraphics -> Cairo
-> FreeType
-> libpng/jpg
* Celestial -> Various open source media decoding libs.
* UIKit -> Chamelleon

This is a very weird project. You may ask, why am I doing this? The answer is: no ****ing idea

This project is actually far more complicated than it sounds. *Far* more complicated.

Edit:
businesscat2000 from the Crackberry community, has already got iOS apps running on the Blackberry Playbook and Windows!
Amazing!
Before calling it fake or real, the Crackberry website also confirms it's real.

Check out the link for details and videos:
http://crackberry.com/developer-gets...lackberry-real

The CPU isn't emulated on Playbook (though it is on Windows). It works very similarly to how WINE works to run Windows applications on Linux. The app binary is mapped into memory and imports are resolved to point to my own implementation of the various APIs needed. iOS actually uses a few open APIs already, which Playbook supports just as well (GL ES, and OpenAL). The bulk of the work has been in implementing all of the objective C classes that are required. The ARM code of the applications run as-is - the armv6/v7 support on PB/iDevices are pretty much identical, and the code is designed to run in USR mode. No SWIs, GPIO accesses or any of that kind of shenanigans.
Altough it's not confirmed if this has something to do with Project Magenta, I thought I'll just put this information too. To show that running iOS apps IS possible on a different OS!
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Last edited by HtheB; 2012-06-14 at 13:45.
 

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#2
I think that the best would be a compatibility layer. Is it possible?
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#3
The real beauty of this? Due to the Oracle vs Google trial, it seems Apple won't be able to sue! The downside is that iOS sucks. But I could see why people would want access to the applications (wich is why an application compatibility layer would be better. Especially ported to Maemo / MeeGo / Tizen)

slaapliedje
 

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#4
Originally Posted by marmistrz View Post
I think that the best would be a compatibility layer. Is it possible?
Should be possible if you ask me...
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#5
If she would actually call it Opensource iOS, Apple would sue.

But this isn't anything what most people would call iOS as far as I understand it.
It uses a linux kernel to run some core libraries from Darwin that are also present in iOS in the hope to achieve compatibility with the core applications in iOS.

I think this may be used to run iOS (the actual copyrighted software from Apple) on non-apple hardware. Anybody else have a better explanation what this project is and could achieve?
 
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#6
Interesting. A while ago I was working on a open-source clone of the iOS desktop. If we had that desktop running, and the libraries from this project, we might eventually see iOS running on the N9/N900!
 

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#7
iOs on N900/N950 doesn't interested me - I'm not masochist - but compatibility layer for programs could be useful, the same way WebOS compatibility in Maemo was beneficial

/Estel
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#8
* Will it run iPhone OS apps?
* No, because I'm not aiming to have compatible high level frameworks. Just think
about how much work is required to have a 100% compatible implementation of UIKit
or Celestial. HOWEVER, the CoreOS part should be 100% (or 99%) compatible. Just not
the higher level OS. If you're just interested in this because it will "run iOS apps"
please go away.

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#9
Would be sweet with some kind of iDalvik on the N9 to run IOS apps.


Regards Dousan...
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#10
Originally Posted by nkirk View Post
* Will it run iPhone OS apps?
* No, because I'm not aiming to have compatible high level frameworks. Just think
about how much work is required to have a 100% compatible implementation of UIKit
or Celestial. HOWEVER, the CoreOS part should be 100% (or 99%) compatible. Just not
the higher level OS. If you're just interested in this because it will "run iOS apps"
please go away.

quote from the read me
If she doesn't do it, I'm pretty sure some other developer will do this.
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