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Cross-Platform Mach Interface Generator (mig)

This is a version of Apple’s mig tool, adapted to run on other platforms. This may be useful for cross-development, using non-macOS build systems to target Apple operating systems.

mig takes Mach interface descriptions (.defs files) as input, and outputs headers (.h files) and implementations (.c files) for both clients and servers of the Mach RPC interface described.

Prerequisites

Build-time prerequisites

  • Autoconf
  • Automake
  • make. GNU Make has been tested.
  • A C compiler and associated toolchain. Both clang and gcc have been tested.
  • A lexer (lex). flex has been tested.
  • A parser generator (yacc). Bison has been tested.

Run-time prerequisites

  • bash
  • A C preprocessor capable of targeting the desired environment. Both clang and gcc have been tested.

Getting and building the source

% git clone --branch=cross_platform \
    https://github.com/markmentovai/bootstrap_cmds
% cd bootstrap_cmds
% autoreconf --install
% sh configure
% make

This will produce migcom.tproj/migcom, but don’t use that directly. Instead, invoke migcom.tproj/mig.sh as the front end.

It is also possible to make install, which installs mig.sh as mig, alongside migcom and man pages for both.

Running mig

To use mig, you should have:

  • A compiler capable of targeting the intended Apple platform, and
  • a corresponding Apple SDK.

The compiler will typically be clang, and mig will prefer clang to cc if installed. The compiler choice can be influenced by setting the MIGCC environment variable. It is possible, although atypical, to use a gcc cross-compiler targeting an Apple platform.

The SDK must be given in an -isysroot argument. This will typically be required, as the compiler will not likely use the correct SDK for a cross build without being told what to use.

By the same token, it is highly recommended to use -arch or -target, as the compiler default will not likely be correct otherwise. (Exception: in the unusual gcc cross compiler case, the compiler front-end is specific to the cross-build configuration, so -arch and -target should not be used, and in fact must not be used as they will be rejected by the compiler.)

% mig -arch x86_64 -isysroot ~/MacOSX11.1.sdk \
    ~/MacOSX11.1.sdk/usr/include/mach/mach_exc.defs

This will normally produce mach_exc.h, mach_excServer.c, and mach_excUser.c.

Changes from upstream

Upstream mig is available from Apple Open Source in the bootstrap_cmds project, present in many macOS and Developer Tools releases. This repository contains full unaltered history on the main branch, on which this cross_platform branch is based.

These major changes are present:

  • A GNU Autotools-based build system (Automake, Autoconf) is added. Upstream mig is distributed with only an Xcode-based build system, and Xcode is not available outside of macOS.

  • Source code changes for compatibility with non-Apple systems were added. Most of these changes are in the compat directory and provide definitions of Mach types absent on other systems. mig.sh was also changed to allow it to find a compiler and invoke it properly outside of macOS. As part of a cross toolchain, mig’s -arch argument is important, but clang does not understand -arch outside of macOS, so mig -arch is transformed to an appropriate clang -target.

  • Although the Autotools-based build works on macOS, if you choose to build with the original Xcode-based build system, it will actually build without errors, even outside of an Apple-internal build. To ensure the version string is set correctly, set RC_ProjectNameAndSourceVersion, which can be achieved by running:

    % xcodebuild RC_ProjectNameAndSourceVersion=$(
    sed -Ene 's/^AC_INIT\(\[(.*)], \[(.*)](,.*)?\)$/\1-\2/p' < configure.ac)

Additional reading

These links are in decreasing order of freshness, but MIG hasn’t changed much.

Questions

Does this make it possible to use Mach on a non-Mach-based operating system?

No, this is just for cross-building. It’s not possible to use mig-generated interfaces without a functioning Mach IPC system. On Apple operating systems, Mach IPC is implemented in xnu, the kernel.

What does bootstrap_cmds mean? Are there any other cmds?

“Bootstrap commands”. I don’t know for sure. Mach has a bootstrap server, a directory service for other Mach servers on the system, currently implemented in launchd (itself a part of XPC since OS X 10.10). The bootstrap protocol did use a mig-generated interface internally until the XPC rewrite. Still, there are many other users of mig on the system, so this connection is dubious.

As recently as Mac OS X 10.7, a small assortment of other commands appeared alongside mig in this package: config, decomment, relpath, and vers_string. Since then, it’s just been a lonely mig. config and decomment, at least, have moved directly into the kernel package, xnu. mig is also used to build xnu. In this context, “bootstrap” probably refers to bootstrapping the core operating system, including the kernel.

What’s migcom mean?

MIG Compiler.

What’s a .tproj, anyway?

It’s a tool project, dating to NeXTSTEP’s Project Builder. This is an ancestor of the Command Line Tool target type in Xcode.

Isn’t it MiG?

The Mach Interface Generator is usually abbreviated as MIG. Some old NeXTSTEP documentation and user-facing strings in the source code do refer to MiG, which is cute, but is not usual, and is not the original (CMU Mach) or modern (Apple) spelling.