A new project named Kakehashi is currently in development, aiming to create a translator that will enable users to run macOS executable files in the Mach-O format, designed for the ARM64 architecture, on Linux systems with the ARM64 architecture. This translation process allows the macOS code to run directly on Linux without the need for JIT compilation or emulation, utilizing only libSystem system call overrides and exception handling. The primary objective of Kakehashi is to offer the capability to execute command line utilities that are compiled for macOS on Linux. The project is being written in the Rust programming language and is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license.
As of the latest development stage, the project has successfully demonstrated the launch of 7-Zip, 7zz, and curl utilities that are compiled for macOS, along with the execution of test builds using the clang compiler. The translation of system calls is entirely implemented in user space. During compression testing with 7zz, it was observed that the performance of launching macOS builds is 5.2 times slower compared to the native Linux build (118 seconds versus 22.5 seconds). Despite the significant translation overhead, Kakehashi can still be beneficial for running macOS executable files in continuous integration environments that operate on Linux. This is due to the lower cost of processor time in Linux environments compared to macOS-based environments.