Darwin is mostly POSIX-compatible, but has never, by itself, been certified as compatible with any version of POSIX. Starting with Leopard, macOS has been certified as compatible with the Single UNIX Specification version 3 (SUSv3).[7][8][9]
The heritage of Darwin began with Unix derivatives supplemented by aspects of NeXT's NeXTSTEP operating system (later, since version 4.0, known as OPENSTEP), first released in 1989. After Apple bought NeXT in 1996, it announced it would base its next operating system on OPENSTEP. This was developed into Rhapsody in 1997, Mac OS X Server 1.0 in 1999, Mac OS X Public Beta in 2000, and Mac OS X 10.0 in 2001.
Up to Darwin 8.0.1, released in April 2005, Apple released a binary installer (as an ISO image) after each major Mac OS X release that allowed one to install Darwin on PowerPC and Intel x86 systems as a standalone operating system.[12] Minor updates were released as packages that were installed separately. Darwin is now only available as source code. As of January 2023, Apple no longer mentions Darwin by name on its Open Source website and only publishes an incomplete collection of open-source projects relating to macOS and iOS.
The last bootable full release of Darwin supported 32-bit and 64-bit Apple PowerPC systems and 32-bit Intel PCs.[18]
Darwin currently includes support for the 64-bitx86-64 variant of the Intel x86processors used in Intel-based Macs and the 64-bit ARM processors used in the iPhone 5S and later, the 6th generation iPod Touch, the 5th generation iPad and later, the iPad Air family, the iPad Mini 2 and later, the iPad Pro family, the fourth generation and later Apple TVs, the HomePod family, and Macs with Apple silicon such as the 2020 Apple M1 Macs, as well as the Raspberry Pi 3B.[19][20] An open-source port of the XNU kernel exists that supports Darwin on Intel and AMD x86 platforms not officially supported by Apple, though it does not appear to have been updated since 2009.[21] An open-source port of the XNU kernel also exists for ARM platforms, though it has not been updated since 2016.[22] Older versions supported some or all of 32-bit PowerPC, 64-bit PowerPC, 32-bit x86, and 32-bit ARM.
It supports the POSIX API by way of its BSD lineage (largely FreeBSDuserland), so a large number of programs written for various other UNIX-like systems can be compiled on Darwin with no changes to the source code.
Darwin does not include many of the defining elements of macOS, such as the Carbon and Cocoa APIs or the Quartz Compositor and Aqua user interface, and thus cannot run Mac applications. It does, however, support a number of lesser-known features of macOS, such as mDNSResponder, which is the multicastDNS responder and a core component of the Bonjour networking technology, and launchd, an advanced service managementframework.
OpenDarwin was a community-led operating system based on the Darwin system. It was founded in April 2002 by Apple Inc. and Internet Systems Consortium. Its goal was to increase collaboration between Apple developers and the free software community. Apple benefited from the project because improvements to OpenDarwin would be incorporated into Darwin releases; and the free/open source community benefited from being given complete control over its own operating system, which could then be used in free software distributions such as GNU-Darwin.[25]
On July 25, 2006, the OpenDarwin team announced that the project was shutting down, as they felt OpenDarwin had "become a mere hosting facility for Mac OS X related projects", and that the efforts to create a standalone Darwin operating system had failed.[26] They also state: "Availability of sources, interaction with Apple representatives, difficulty building and tracking sources, and a lack of interest from the community have all contributed to this."[27] The last stable release was version 7.2.1, released on July 16, 2004.[28]
PureDarwin
PureDarwin is a project to create a bootable operating system image from Apple's released source code for Darwin.[29] Since the halt of OpenDarwin and the release of bootable images since Darwin 8.x, it has been increasingly difficult to create a full operating system as many components became closed source. In 2015 the project created a preview release based on Darwin 9 with an X11 GUI,[30] followed by a command-line only 17.4 Beta based on Darwin 17.[31]
Window Maker, a window manager designed to emulate the NeXT GUI as part of the wider GNUstep project.
MacPorts (formerly DarwinPorts), Fink, and Homebrew are projects to port UNIX programs to the Darwin operating system and provide package management. In addition, several standard UNIX package managers—such as RPM, pkgsrc, and Portage—have Darwin ports. Some of these operate in their own namespace so as not to interfere with the base system.
GNU-Darwin was a project that ports packages of free software to Darwin. They package OS images in a way similar to a Linux distribution.
The Darling project is a compatibility layer for running macOS binaries on Linux systems. It uses some Darwin source code.[35]
There are various projects that focus on driver support: e.g., wireless drivers,[36][37] wired NIC drivers[38][39][40] modem drivers,[41] card readers,[42] and the ext2 and ext3 file systems.[43][44]
DarwinBSD Project is a Darwin project using pkgsrc for packages. It is an open source project.[45]
^"Mac OS X Leopard - Technology - UNIX". Leopard Technology Overview. Apple Inc. Archived from the original on December 27, 2008. Leopard is now an Open Brand UNIX 03 Registered Product, conforming to the SUSv3 and POSIX 1003.1 specifications for the C API, Shell Utilities, and Threads.
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