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MachTen
Welcome to MachTen, a complete UNIX OS that runs as a Macintosh application. MachTen provides a full suite of Internet services, distributed file system services, and remote printer spooling. These services are available not only to UNIX applications, but to Macintosh applications as well. MachTen also supports a sophisticated set of UNIX and X software development tools, a high-performance X Window server, and hundreds of UNIX applications.
The combined strength of UNIX and X enables seamless integration of applications and resources across networks. Having UNIX and X on your Macintosh will enable you to benefit from the rich array of Macintosh easy-to-use applications and, at the same time, let you tap into your multi-vendor client/server environment to run remote applications and to share resources across your corporate network and the Internet.
MachTen is a mature software product, under development since 1989. In 1991, when it was first introduced, it received the MacUser "Best Connectivity" Eddy Award. In 1994, it was included in UNIX World's "Best Products of 1994". The MachTen UNIX virtual machine amplifies and extends MacOS. It includes hundreds of commands and utilities and a complete suite of UNIX client and server networking services integrated with MacOS. It supports industry-standard C, C++, Objective-C, Java, Fortran, and Ada software development tools.
MachTen UNIX Virtual Machine.
MachTen's UNIX virtual machine (UVM) extends MacOS to support a UNIX execution environment. MachTen's UVM is implemented as a small, tight family of MacOS system extensions, essentially fifteen shared libraries consuming about 1.2MB of memory. These libraries can be licensed by developers to support UNIX applications on MacOS. The MachTen system software contains these libraries and a suite of UNIX applications.
Porting Software to MachTen.
MachTen has a BSD 4.4 POSIX Application Programming Interface (API). A great deal of effort has gone into supporting standard BSD and POSIX environments on a single system. Porting software to MachTen consists of configuring the source for BSD 4.4 and one or more make operations. Both GNU and Berkeley make are supported. Once the initial code production is complete, amodule-by-module checkout process is recommended. With over five years of PowerPC development, this process has been made as smooth as possible. The availability of a complete family of X11R6 applications, a complete suite GNU gcc tools, hundreds of network applications, and large, sometimes difficult applications, such as Emacs 19.34b, attest to the strength of MachTen's basic software porting environment.
Professional MachTen 2.3
MachTen 2.3 is Tenon Intersystems "UNIX for all 68k Macintoshes." MachTen 2.3 is an implementation of Berkeley's 4.3BSD Unix, built on a Carnegie Mellon Mach foundation (Mach 2.5). It runs as an application on the native Macintosh Operating System (MacOS). Included with MachTen are Unix programs and a Mach kernel. The kernel supports a standard Unix applications environment which supports hundreds of standard Unix applications. That environment also allows all standard Macintosh programs, such as a Macintosh spreadsheet or desk accessory application, to run simultaneously with Unix programs. MachTen extends MacOS with true Unix multitasking, full internet communications, a distributed file system via NFS, and a Unix software development environment. Professional MachTen runs on all 68K-based Macintoshes --including Classic, Quadras, Centris, and Duos and PowerBooks. MachTen is the only Unix that runs on a PowerBook!
Professional MachTen includes the basic GNU C compiler (version2.7.2) and C preprocessor, a Motorola 68000 assembler, a loader, a symbol table utility, load module tools (ar and ranlib), a software management tool (make), a set of Tenon compiler libraries, a set of UNIX libraries, a C language beautifier (indent), the GNU source debugger (gdb) and lex and yacc. Among the libraries included are a MachTen UNIX system call library, the curses library, NFS library support, termcap library support, and a math library that provides an interface to Apple's Standard Apple Numerics Environment.
In addition, Professional MachTen supports virtual memory and protection for UNIX applications. The package runs on all 68k Macintoshes, but you need memory management support to take advantage of MachTen paging and memory protection.