Skip to content

Macaros 0.2.0

Choose a tag to compare

View all tags
@jonx jonx released this 15 Aug 16:05
v0.2.0
21651dd

Macaros 0.2 is an experimental, hosted AROS system for Apple Silicon. It is a place to test our own operating-system and application-platform concepts; it is not a generic AROS distribution. AROS runs as an arm64 process under macOS, and a bare-metal Apple Silicon version is not planned.

The release includes:

  • the Wanderer desktop in a Cocoa/Metal window;
  • clipboard, CoreAudio, networking, host volumes and native media decoding;
  • Zed and Ferail as native AArch64 AROS applications;
  • the growing emu68k.library compatibility layer for legacy 68k applications;
  • the writable exFAT handler and EXFAT0 DOSDriver;
  • the aros-ctl automation and inspection harness.

Moonstone is not included.

Before installing

Open the disk image and run Check Macaros Compatibility.command. It checks the processor, macOS version, memory, Metal support, available disk space, runtime architecture and application signature.

The app and disk image are signed with Developer ID, notarized by Apple and stapled. SHA-256 hashes are in the attached checksum file.

AArch64 ABI requirement

Software built for Macaros must not use register x18. Apple reserves it as the platform register, and Darwin signal delivery does not preserve a guest value while Macaros is running hosted. Compile C and C++ target code with -ffixed-x18, use the checked-in Rust target with +reserve-x18, and do not allocate x18 in assembly.

Exact source revisions

The exact FFmpeg 8.1.2 source corresponding to the statically linked libraries is attached as Macaros-0.2.0-FFmpeg-8.1.2-source.tar.xz. Build configuration and relinking scripts are in the Macaros repository. Third-party notices and licence texts are also included in the disk image.

Current limits

  • Legacy 68k compatibility is substantial but incomplete, especially for software requiring original Amiga custom hardware.
  • Zed does not yet include all language-server and Git integration from its upstream desktop releases.
  • Some host-volume and settings changes require restarting Macaros.
  • Keep important data outside the writable shared volume until you have tested your workflow.
Assets 5
Loading