Cross-compiling for OS X from Linux

Question

Is there an easy to use tool-chain to compile code for Darwin (mac's OS) from Linux?

For example, I would like to compile libpcap (or tcpdump) on a Linux machine and run in on my MAC. I've come across osxcross but it requires getting the Xcode SDK and such, has anyone tried this before ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You should give darling a spin.

Darling is:

Darling is a runtime environment for OS X applications.

It's like WINE for Mac OS X. Although it is still relatively a small project, you can already compile applications using Xcode using darling.

Darling [~]$ hdiutil attach Xcode_7.2.dmg
/Volumes/Xcode_7.2
Darling [~]$ cp -r /Volumes/Xcode_7.2/Xcode.app /Applications
Darling [~]$ export SDKROOT=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.11.sdk
Darling [~]$ echo 'void main() { puts("Hello world"); }' > helloworld.c
Darling [~]$ /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/clang helloworld.c -o helloworld
Darling [~]$ ./helloworld
Hello world

I'm not sure a more complicated program will compile correctly and will work on Mac, but it's worth a try.

Alternatively, you can run Mac OS X on a Virtualbox inside Linux, and then transfer the compiled files to the destination machine.