UNIX On Your Desktop
Volume Number: 15
Issue Number: 4
Column Tag: Development Environments
UNIX on Your Desktop
by Vicki Brown
A Look at MachTen and CodeBuilder
UNIX on Your Macintosh
Have you been thinking about running UNIX® on your Macintosh? Perhaps you'd like
to get a head start on Mac OS X Server. Or you've been reading a lot about Linux in the
news lately, and wonder what the fuss is about. Perhaps your company just added a Sun
Solaris system or a Silicon Graphics Irix machine and you need to learn about UNIX.
Or, you want to run a web server or an FTP server. Or, perhaps you're just curious.
But you don't want to give up your Mac OS! What can you do?
Power MachTen from Tenon Intersystems <http://www.tenon.com> may be just what
you need. Power MachTen is a complete implementation of a Berkeley UNIX Operating
System for the Power Macintosh, using a Carnegie-Mellon Mach kernel. The entire
MachTen UNIX environment runs as an application under Mac OS, just like any other
application (with a few important differences). The Mac OS and MachTen share the
processor, the hard drive, the network, and any peripherals you may have installed.
Power MachTen is a complete UNIX system, with many features such as network file
sharing, multi-user login capability (via telnet), Web server, Domain Name
services, and more. If you don't need the networking and file sharing features, you may
instead want to take a look at CodeBuilder. CodeBuilder uses the same kernel and has
many of the same UNIX features, but lacks the networking and file sharing capabilities
of MachTen. If you're only interested in software development under a UNIX system,
CodeBuilder may be the right choice.
Figure 1. CodeBuilder Console.
Source Code Development
The CodeBuilder environment includes a wide range of features to aid in source code
development. CodeBuilder provides support for many popular languages, including Ada,
C, C++, FORTRAN, Java, Objective-C, Perl, and Tcl/Tk. The development tools can be
used to create Macintosh applications, Unix applications, or hybrid (Macintosh/Unix)
applications.
In addition, CodeBuilder includes a choice of the most popular Unix shells: C-shell
(csh), T-C Shell (tcsh), the "Bourne" shell (sh) and the Bourne Again Shell (bash).
The shells are interactive command interpreters, required for issuing commands in
the MachTen or CodeBuilder terminal windows. Each shell also has its own language
which can be used for writing useful small programs called shell scripts. The default
shell is Csh. However, if you are unsure about which shell to use, try bash. Of the
four, this one has the most (and best) features available for both interactive use and
script creation.
When you first launch CodeBuilder, it's easy to see that this is no ordinary Mac OS
application! Indeed, CodeBuilder is a complete UNIX environment, sans networking
features. When you log in you'll be presented with a new terminal window, and a shell
prompt.