[darwinbuild-dev] Build XNU from scratch

[Jacob Morris]

Hi Guys,

I am interested in building a minimal darwin OS from scratch.
First things first, I need to know how to build the xnu kernel, and what other elements are necessary to make my system boot into a shell.
Using VMware Fusion 3.0, I am booting my system into linux using a live cd and partitioning and formatting my disk from there.

I need to know what packages need to be compiled and placed onto my "destination system" (the partition that I will eventually be booting from).
What packages are necessary to compile XNU?
Is a linux system capable of compiling XNU?

I am assuming that whatever tools need to be built and/or installed in order to build the kernel can be built and installed on a linux system as well using binutils and gcc.

So far, I have these packages:
bootstrap_cmds-72
cxxfilt-9
dtrace-78
kext_tools-180.1
xnu-1504.3.12

These are all the latest releases from Apple.

If I remaster my linux live cd to include these packages, will they be buildable by my linux system?  I want to boot into linux from the live cd, mount the file system I have on the cd that will have the packages in it, then compile those packages and then use the linux system to compile XNU.

Is this possible?  If so, are there any other prerequesites?  If not, what other steps need to be taken in order for me to bootstrap an empty system?  My intention is to have a linux (or possibly BSD) live cd that I can boot from that will have all the tools necessary to compile XNU, launchd, shell, and the basics, and then have a system that I can chroot into and build the rest from scratch.

Please let me know if this is possible, and if there is any documentation out there.  If you can tell me what it takes to compile XNU from a non OS X machine, I would be happy to document my process and post my results back.


Jacob Morris
jacob.s.morris at gmail.com
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