Re: [Qemu-devel] User-space emulation on Mac OS X to run Mac OS XIntel applications

[Vesselin Peev]

Hello,

Such a QEMU capability would be quite useful once the Intel Macs start 
becoming widespread. While you could make a Universal Binary without 
changees, it is likely that the average app would experience various issues, 
some of them very subtle, when executed on Intel, because the latter is a 
little-endian architecture as opposed to the big-endian one (PowerPC) of 
today.  Today, most applications are written for a single endian type. Few 
apps can handle more than a single endian type. It is a considerable hassle 
and requires double the testing to support 2 endian types (I am not saying 
it is generally not good to be done, though!). That won't change with the 
introduction of Intel Macs. In other words, the Mac world would start 
switching en masse from big endian (PowerPC) to little endian (Intel x86) in 
their programs. After a relatively short transitory period (2-3 years, I 
think), most Mac apps, and especially entirely new ones, would be developed 
only for Intel. QEMU could very well be the answer to bringing those apps to 
the older Macs.

Steve Jobs and his marketing machine is the culprit for the disinformation. 
On stage during the Apple WWDC, he demonstrated that all it takes to produce 
two working Intel and PPC binaries is to enable two checkboxes, never 
mentioning the subtle endianness issues. The audience applauded...

-Vesko

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steven" <address@hidden>
To: <address@hidden>
Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2005 11:06 AM
Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] User-space emulation on Mac OS X to run Mac OS 
XIntel applications


Yes I think this would be useful because there are situations where
developers do not create universal binaries. This is most apparent
with the host of applications being ported to Mac OS X on Intel that
aren't compiled using GCC4 and are therefore Intel-only.

And also, it might help future-proof current Macs a little, as
developers won't offer Universal Binaries forever.

Steve

On 10/21/05, René Korthaus <address@hidden> wrote:
> Am 21.10.2005 um 22:16 schrieb Steven:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Looking at qemu, it seems as if it could be possible to allow it to
> > run Intel OS X apps on PowerPC OS X, much like a reverse Rosetta. The
> > x86 frameworks/libraries are included with Xcode, so possibly
> > everything else could run natively, just have the app itself emulated.
>
> Anyway, I ask myself if this is useful at all?! Apple introduced
> Universal Binaries along with XCode 2.1, so Intel OS X apps will run
> on PPC, too, if they are Universal Binary formatted. This does make
> sense for almost all apps, cause not all macusers can afford an Intel
> Mac as soon as they are released and software vendors want to earn
> money!
>
> >
> > Is anybody willing to try getting this to work?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Steve
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Qemu-devel mailing list
> > address@hidden
> > http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
> >
> >
>
>
>
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