Possibility of loading/executing ELF files on OSX

macos operating-system nasm
Daniel Brotherston picture Daniel Brotherston · Apr 4, 2010 · Viewed 9.8k times · Source

I'm just curious as to the possibility of loading and executing elf files on OSX. I know the standard executable format is MACHO, but NASM is unable to generate debug information for MACHO objects (and I am required to use NASM). I imagine its a long shot, but I don't suppose I can use ELF files. I can build them with NASM, but I can't seem to even link them with LD.

Answer

stuntmouse picture stuntmouse · Apr 10, 2010

The author of the best OS X internals book has some code showing how you'd write a kernel extension to handle another executable file format here. He gives two examples: running running Google Native Client (NaCl) ELF applications and PDP-11 apps with Apout.

I'm not sure how mature this software is. It currently supports Leopard and better.

Related questions

What languages are Windows, Mac OS X and Linux written in?

I was just wondering who knows what programming languages Windows, Mac OS X and Linux are made up from and what languages are used for each part of the OS (ie: Kernel, plug-in architecture, GUI components, etc). I assume that …

Read More
Fixing 403 Forbidden on alias directory with Apache

I am trying to setup an alias to point to some directory on my filesystem not in DocumentRoot. Now I get a 403 Forbidden response. These are the steps taken: 1. edit http.conf, adding: Alias /example "/Users/user/Documents/example" then... &…

Read More
How closely are Mac OS X and BSD related?

I read that Mac OS X and bsd are related. How closely are they related. Can Mac OS X software be tweaked and installed on BSD?

Read More