The osxppc platform
===================
ack -mosxppc ...
This platform produces Mach-o executables for PowerPC Mac OS X. You
can run them from the command line in the Terminal.
You *can't* link to libraries from other compilers. These static
executables don't use the dynamic linker. They don't load Apple's
libraries, so they can't call Carbon or Cocoa.
The executables use BSD system calls to interact with your Mac. Our
libsys provides only a few system calls, enough to run a few demo
programs, but not much else. Check the header files in ../osx/include
for the available system calls.
Bugs
----
ACK didn't run on Mac OS X when this platform was added. The only way
to run ack -mosxppc was as a cross compiler from another operating
system.
ACK doesn't have 64-bit integers, but Mac OS X uses 64-bit integers in
its system calls. Our libsys converts between 32-bit and 64-bit
integers by setting the high bits to zero, or discarding the high
bits. This affects lseek() and stat(). They report the wrong values
for file sizes and offsets beyond 4 gigabytes.
Our PowerPC code generator is new and probably has bugs. Its stack
layout and calling conventions are not compatible with other
compilers. It passes all function arguments on the stack, which is
slower than passing them in registers.
Example
-------
Compile something:
ack -mosxppc -O6 -o paranoia examples/paranoia.c
The executable has a symbol table. If you have Apple's Xcode, try
nm -g paranoia # to list the global symbols
otool -hl paranoia # to check the Mach header and load commands
gdb paranoia # to debug it
Within gdb, commands like "gdb main" and "gdb '.ret'" can disassemble
functions. Backtraces don't work, because our stack layout is not the
same as Apple's.
Other hints
-----------
PowerPC Macs became obsolete after Apple's transition to Intel. Mac
OS X 10.5 Leopard was the last version to run on PowerPC. The older
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger was the last version to include Classic for
running Mac OS 9 programs. Our ack -mosxppc began to produce
executables in 2016, about 7 years after Apple released Mac OS X 10.6
Snow Leopard for Intel only.
Apple's Xcode included tools like gcc and gdb. It also had manual
pages for some system calls, like getdirentries(2). Some system calls
are like FreeBSD, some are unique to OS X. If you want to learn how
to call write(2) or sigaction(2), then a manual page from another BSD
or Linux might be enough.
Xcode 2.5 was the last version to run on Tiger. The "Xcode 2.5
Developer Tools" were a 902.9 MB download from Apple. As of 2016, the
download required an Apple ID and was available at:
https://developer.apple.com/download/more/
Older versions of Xcode came with Mac OS X. If your version of OS X
came with your Mac, /Applications/Installers might contain an Xcode
installer. If you upgraded OS X, your install DVD might have Xcode.
The source code at https://opensource.apple.com/ might reveal more
about system calls. For 10.4.11.ppc, the kernel is in xnu-792.24.17,
and Libc is in Libc-391.2.10. These files might help:
xnu*/bsd/kern/syscalls.master
master list of BSD system calls
xnu*/osfmk/kern/syscall_sw.c
master list of Mach traps
xnu*/bsd/kern/mach_loader.c
details about loading Mach-o executables
xnu*/bsd/dev/ppc/unix_signal.c
details about sending signals to processes
xnu*/bsd/sys/*.h
headers that Xcode installs as /usr/include/sys/*.h
xnu*/bsd/man/man2/*.2
manual pages that Xcode installs as /usr/share/man/man2/*.2
Libc*/ppc/sys/SYS.h
Libc*/ppc/sys/*.s
assembly code (in gas syntax) for making system calls
The 10.4.11.ppc sources are wrong for Intel; use 10.4.11.x86 or 10.5
or newer. 10.5 moved SYS.h to xnu*/libsyscall/custom/SYS.h
The kernel maps a common page into every process, and Apple's Libc
uses the common page to speed up system calls like gettimeofday(2).
Our libsys does not use the common page.
George Koehler <xkernigh@netscape.net>
2016-12-03
26de4c1ab1