alt.hn

8/2/2026 at 4:26:40 PM

Show HN: Kakehashi – Experimental userspace to run macOS binaries on Linux ARM

 https://github.com/wie-project/kakehashi

by vlad_kalinkin

8/2/2026 at 5:06:01 PM

Interesting project! A long term vision for MacOS applications is feasible given the success of WINE/Proton with Windows applications.

Are you familiar with the Darling project? https://github.com/darlinghq/darling There's an open PR for ARM64 support https://github.com/darlinghq/darling/pull/1753 Could you combine efforts or do your goals differ too much?

by 13rac1

8/2/2026 at 6:25:12 PM

In their "License" section on Github, they write "This project is not derived from Darling." - so they clearly are familiar with it.

by iSnow

8/3/2026 at 8:18:20 AM

I wonder if this project will have any more momentum than Darling or if the set mac=only programs that people want to run on Linux is just too small.

by account42

8/2/2026 at 8:55:37 PM

Wine got a lot of support from games, even today productivity apps are often much less supported.

by ZiiS

8/3/2026 at 2:40:13 AM

Which makes sense, games have a much smaller area of contact with the host platform.

This sounds strange given how much modern GPUs can do, but consider that a typical Windows machine ca. 2005 will have Access/JET Red, Active Directory/JET Blue, possibly MSSQL, definitely MSMQ/MTS, ODBC, OLE DB, DAO, ADO, that one SQL interpreter inside Windows Installer, and I’ve only just listed Microsoft’s database-adjacent things. I’m not surprised that press reports about the “MinWin” initiative mentioned as the main difficulty the fact that nobody could figure out if any given component was actually necessary for a Windows install to function, let alone to be compatible with third-party software. (Is anybody other than WordPad using the Word 6.0 parser included among the text converters?..) Now consider that this was, by our standards, a lightweight system on a massively underpowered computer.

by mananaysiempre

8/3/2026 at 11:21:14 AM

Yes partly complexity; but also why spend your time trying to get Excel running knowing each update will be a pain when you can just put that time into getting LibreOffice Calc working better.

by ZiiS

8/3/2026 at 1:04:15 AM

Yeah.. just give me a thing I double click that starts After Effects and Excel.

by doctorpangloss

8/2/2026 at 4:26:53 PM

Hi HN, I started developing an experimental project with the goal of running macOS CLI binaries natively on Linux ARM machines. As of now, we have working prototypes for: - 7-Zip: Passes multi-threaded compression tests on an 8k-file tree. Currently ~5.2x slower than native Linux execution, but I already mapped out a clear optimization plan to cut this gap down. - curl: Over 200 commands and options successfully pass our automated Docker test script. - Xcode Tools Git: Basic version control commands (init, add, commit) are up and running, though 100% stability is not yet guaranteed. I would be highly grateful for your constructive criticism, architectural ideas, and feedback! Thank you!

by vlad_kalinkin

8/2/2026 at 5:05:35 PM

I assume you eventually plan to target binaries that don't already exist on Linux? Where do you think you'll start?

by StilesCrisis

8/2/2026 at 5:49:54 PM

Well, of course, most of all I would like to achieve full-fledged support for Xcode Tools (including building iOS applications) and the macOS version of Homebrew. But, of course, there is still a lot of work ahead to get to this point. Thank you!

by vlad_kalinkin

8/3/2026 at 12:50:33 AM

I would look at osxcross[0] if you haven't looked into it already. It can at least do the "build stuff targeting macos" part (well, relatively speaking). Swift support kinda breaks down, unfortunately, and actually getting it set up is a bit of a hassle. but it does work.

[0]: https://github.com/tpoechtrager/osxcross

by ethin

8/3/2026 at 8:22:57 AM

Would be nice to have a "sanity check the resulting binary" tool though like you can use Wine for Windows builds.

by account42

8/2/2026 at 5:57:22 PM

And it’s an endlessly moving target, look at how many apps break every major release (and use it to justify regular, expensive paid upgrades)

by iwontberude

8/2/2026 at 6:05:35 PM

That's true. But if we can achieve support for the current stable version, it will be much easier to add new features later or rework the ones that were replaced (unless Apple changes everything on purpose :)

by vlad_kalinkin

8/2/2026 at 9:41:50 PM

Historically, I’d say that the chances of this being successful are exceptionally low given how large the ABI surface is — and it will wildly change out from underneath you on a near yearly cadence.

Perhaps LLMs change that calculation. I really couldn’t say.

by frumplestlatz

8/3/2026 at 3:56:58 AM

I'm curious: how large is it really? As I understand it, Kakehashi is targeting command line programs, especially Xcode-tools. How much non-POSIX/Mach/BSD interface do Mac command line programs use? How much of that is not already open source. How much of that changes yearly? The only thing that comes to mind is process security for codesign and notarization but I'm just guessing.

by RossBencina

8/3/2026 at 3:15:29 PM

The Xcode Tools are written by Apple to run on Macs; they have no reason to avoid internal APIs, and when dealing with App Store-related concerns, they probably do use them heavily.

by StilesCrisis

8/3/2026 at 4:06:57 AM

Even React Native tools used by tons of companies struggle to keep up with Xcode build tool changes on mac itself.

by dmix

8/2/2026 at 9:35:31 PM

Do you plan on supporting different target versions and implementing similar restrictions to those targets?

eg: older macOS had a writable /usr/ while newer does not without manual effort.

Also, do you plan on having similar cli tools available with similar features ported (maybe from the available Darwin sources?)

eg: can I run a /bin/bash script that expects a macOS environment? Will it get "Darwin" from "uname -o"

by imoverclocked

8/3/2026 at 4:36:18 AM

[dead]

by nullsanity

8/3/2026 at 6:46:37 AM

Interesting, I've been building the inverse of this project, to enable running Linux binaries on macOS, as that's not something I've seen in an active project. It works an a very similar way but it's in Zig.

I'll post it soon!

by alexboehm

8/3/2026 at 6:49:05 AM

Wow! Best of luck with your project. It's truly amazing how our ideas mirrored each other perfectly :)

by vlad_kalinkin

8/2/2026 at 5:33:09 PM

This is something i have been looking for long time, however i have gone through repository and docs and the problem is bigger and solution still seems to be early, I am curious how you gonna take further, will be watching it

by Arshad-Talpur

8/2/2026 at 5:57:11 PM

Thank you very much!

by vlad_kalinkin

8/2/2026 at 5:09:00 PM

this is something I've been waiting for a long time. I will be watching this with great interest.

If this ever gets far enough I would love to see something similar to yabridge implemented on top of this and be able to run AU binaries on linux.

by leothetechguy

8/3/2026 at 6:26:56 AM

What's your use-case? Are you hoping for eventual GUI before it becomes useful, or there's value for you in the CLI?

by petesergeant

8/3/2026 at 1:13:45 PM

I just want to use macOS plugins for music production on asahi linux. A GUI is important but not strictly necessary I guess. So yeah, limited gui support would be great.

by leothetechguy

8/3/2026 at 1:31:30 PM

It's not on the list of goals yet (so far only CLI and a stable basis), but of course if I went to GUI, it would be nice, since I work in Logic Pro :)

By the way, has anyone checked if the utility works on Asahi Linux (or on real non-Mac hardware)?

by vlad_kalinkin

8/3/2026 at 1:28:03 AM

Really cool project, but honest question though: why do people tend to name these projects so horribly? I know software engineers aren’t actually known for their creative acuity when it comes to naming, but damn, Kakehashi is just bad.

by idieifkiwdu

8/3/2026 at 5:22:22 AM

Haha, thanks for the comment!

My previous project had a more traditional name: WIE (Wie is Emulator), which was an attempt to run PE64 binaries on macOS via Cranelift JIT. It was an ironic joke nod to WINE (and it still survives in the GitHub organization name).

For this one, I wanted something more conceptual. Kakehashi (掛け橋) means "bridge" or "go-between" in Japanese. Plus, I just really liked how it sounds and harmonizes with Asahi Linux.

by vlad_kalinkin

8/3/2026 at 8:28:57 AM

WIE is also bad because the W in Wine is for Windows.

Should have gone with MIE for both the Wine worldplay and weebery (well close enough anyway).

by account42

8/3/2026 at 11:52:40 AM

W in WINE stands for WINE

by Gabrys1

8/3/2026 at 6:57:15 AM

Kakehashi is perfectly fine for the 2/3 of humanity that live in Asia.

Open up your mind and learn other cultures.

by harrouet

8/3/2026 at 8:30:08 AM

"All Asians speak Japanese" certainly is a take.

by account42

8/3/2026 at 1:29:52 AM

Do names have to be English?

by misnome

8/2/2026 at 7:09:44 PM

If you didn't care about having a fully-redistributable image, but were okay with doing things more like modern old-console-game decompilation projects do (where compiling the project requires the original game ROM as an input), would a project like this be more trivial?

I.e. how hard would it be, comparatively, to design a virtualization framework that doesn't actually ship with any ground-up-rewritten libraries, but instead just expects to execute the binary in question in the context of a full rootfs copied over from a "real" macOS install?

by derefr

8/2/2026 at 8:54:22 PM

with games, afaik that is mostly necessary for assets. For an OS, this would basically like a VM and is slower/more overhead.

by fl0id

8/2/2026 at 5:12:32 PM

How can we tell that this is truly a clean room project and that there is no code from either (Claude or yourself) that is derived from the Darling project?

Otherwise great project.

by rvz

8/2/2026 at 5:43:14 PM

Thanks for the comment! You guessed it, I did use LLMs during development. While the strict definition of a "clean room" design can be debatable when AI is involved, I'd consider this a "light-gray room" approach. There is no direct code plagiarism here: Kakehashi is written from scratch in Rust, whereas Darling is built on C/objc. Furthermore, the architecture is fundamentally different—Darling relies on kernel-level emulation, while Kakehashi is purely focused on a lightweight userspace approach for Linux ARM. In my prompts, I explicitly restricted the use of proprietary components. Ultimately, the codebase speaks for itself, and I welcome everyone to audit the repository! Thanks again!

by vlad_kalinkin

8/2/2026 at 6:43:36 PM

FWIW Darling runs in userspace too.

What do you mean by "proprietary components"?

by 13rac1

8/2/2026 at 6:50:51 PM

Thanks! What I meant is that Kakehashi doesn't require a custom Linux kernel module (LKM). Kakehashi operates completely without root privileges or kernel-level modifications.

By "proprietary components," I meant that in my prompts, I explicitly forbade the copying or direct implementation of private Apple code. Of course, since LLMs are a bit of a black box, it's hard to be 100% certain about everything it synthesized under the hood, but the clear intent was to stick to public ABI definitions and standard open specs.

by vlad_kalinkin

8/2/2026 at 10:16:02 PM

Darling stopped using the kernel module a year ago.

by saurik

8/2/2026 at 5:34:37 PM

Darling is written in a different language so I don't think the LLM would copy paste code from it directly. But it is the main (only?) prior art, so it could be argued that everything the LLM knows about how to do this came because it read and understood Darling, i.e. if Darling didn't exist it may still be able to do this but it would have to figure it out from first principles.

Not saying it happened here, but it's an interesting thought experiment: what if you order an LLm to achieve the same goal as a popular open source project, using all the lessons learned and pitfalls faced by that project, but not to copy the code. Indeed, LLM code is now often better than human code, so direct code copying would be a disadvantage. Humans are certainly inspired by other projects like this all the time and it isn't considered plagiarism.

by billyjobob

8/2/2026 at 6:09:06 PM

> Darling is written in a different language so I don't think the LLM would copy paste code from it directly.

Just because it is written in a different language does not mean that it is a clean room implementation. The logic from Darling might as well have been lifted and then rewritten by a human or an LLM agent.

> Indeed, LLM code is now often better than human code, so direct code copying would be a disadvantage.

Is that why coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex have so many bugs in them? This is entirely dependent on the language chosen with the humans behind the decision to review and accept some of the changes.

> Humans are certainly inspired by other projects like this all the time and it isn't considered plagiarism.

Humans (researchers) also appropriately credit the work that inspires them, especially in experiments and research.

by rvz

8/3/2026 at 2:04:54 AM

you can copyright a specific implementation but that doesn't necessarily grant a patent on the "algorithm". so unless darling is patented then a translation of the "algorithms" in darling is legal. to wit: that's why all the "numerical recipes" books couldn't block implementations in other languages.

by mathisfun123

8/3/2026 at 4:06:00 AM

IANAL and I don't think you are either. Be careful making simplistic inferences about a complicated system. Human "translation" is one thing, algorithmic "translation" has seen separate treatment in IP case law.[1] Whether this has relevance to LLM transformation or recall I don't know.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems,_Inc._v._Souther....

by RossBencina

8/3/2026 at 4:22:18 AM

Do you understand what you're saying?

> Human "translation" is one thing

No it's not since "human translation" is literally all we had until about a year ago.

You should read the case again because it doesn't say what you think it says - it says generating a copyrighted work via a new system is still infringement (which is exactly what I'm arguing isn't happening in this case because what's being generated is a new language impl).

To put it very simply: if I use a machine (biological or electrical) to translate my favorite song into another language that's not infringement.

by mathisfun123

8/2/2026 at 6:40:47 PM

> Indeed, LLM code is now often better than human code

lol. Find better humans.

by nxc18

8/2/2026 at 7:04:01 PM

it depends on your prompting. LLMs can generate beautiful code, or absolute slop.

by sterlind

8/3/2026 at 6:37:12 AM

A future optimized release can be code-named Kakeashi. :)

by kazinator

8/2/2026 at 6:06:01 PM

Quite the interesting work! Although I don't use macOS binaries, I can see this is promising.

by MaxelX

8/2/2026 at 7:18:28 PM

Would be nice to be able to build iOS apps on Linux ARM runners

by fareesh

8/3/2026 at 11:54:28 AM

And that's the intended goal for the project

by Gabrys1

8/2/2026 at 8:34:00 PM

I'm curious, how many agent hours have you spent on this so far?

by cactusplant7374

8/3/2026 at 6:01:34 AM

Based on the commit history, it took about 6 days of active development.

As for the AI assistant, I used Grok 4.5 in Build (Medium, no sub-agents, just standard chats and Plan Mode). I can't track the exact hours, but I spent several full days hyper-focused on this. Naturally, I hit the weekly usage limits all the time and had to sit around waiting for the cooldowns (like now :).

Thanks for the question!

by vlad_kalinkin

8/3/2026 at 1:36:16 AM

[flagged]

by richard_gg

8/3/2026 at 3:03:17 AM

[dead]

by vancekai

8/2/2026 at 5:02:23 PM

[dead]

by Natalia724

8/2/2026 at 6:57:14 PM

[dead]

by hamza7159

8/2/2026 at 5:57:46 PM

[dead]

by tempaccountabcd

8/2/2026 at 6:02:33 PM

[flagged]

by youareinsuffera

8/2/2026 at 6:31:02 PM

> NEVER ONCE allowed me to post here at all, ever, period.

> My first attempt at posting here was in 2021. That account was shadowbanned within hours, for no discernable reason. I was astounded.

Have you considered emailing hn@ycombinator.com to figure out the problem?

by zahlman

8/2/2026 at 6:30:48 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

8/2/2026 at 9:53:57 PM

[flagged]

by claiir

8/2/2026 at 10:37:19 PM

Are there any obvious mistakes? Because the way I see it, AI can and the most models actually do write better READMEs than most people ever cared.

by cromka

8/2/2026 at 6:53:36 PM

[flagged]

by youareinsuffera

8/2/2026 at 5:25:40 PM

[flagged]

by theproblemisyou

8/2/2026 at 5:35:49 PM

I'm not the guy that's banning you.

I come here with the expectation that this isn't 4chan and I leave my opinions exactly as they are while still being polite. This isn't inevitable. Else nobody would use this site. You can be upset about many things like AI and people will share that sentiment or not. You can read the Guidelines, it's not hard to see they aren't unreasonable. And it's easy to see if you violate them.

Thanks for the Death Threat.

by leothetechguy

8/2/2026 at 5:37:47 PM

[flagged]

by theproblemisyou

8/2/2026 at 5:46:36 PM

Fine. Wishing I burned in a Fire isn't technically a Death Threat. Congratulations.

I have no incentive to be nice either, but I am because I want to. And If you are nice while constructively formulating your anger you don't get banned. easy.

sounds like you are just being an asshole because you hate the general consensus on this site, and can't be bothered to be polite in favor of creating new accounts all the time. That makes you the asshole from my perspective.

Have a great Day.

by leothetechguy

8/2/2026 at 5:10:14 PM

[flagged]

by yourewrongsorry

8/2/2026 at 5:13:47 PM

rust is a tool like any other, grow up.

I personally find it easier to work with than c++ in many cases.

EDIT: On second look... you okay dude? That's an awful lot of anger and swearing for an account created 11 minutes ago. Please calm down for your own sake or do something different at least

by leothetechguy

8/2/2026 at 5:27:01 PM

How did he predict your comment?

by meindnoch

8/2/2026 at 5:38:46 PM

I didn't, I just went to his profile and checked the comments since I had a feeling he wasn't being rational. And I saw a lot of very angry comments made before this one.

by leothetechguy

8/2/2026 at 10:34:38 PM

[flagged]

by eddysin