10.6+ Binaries on 10.4 and 10.5

[captainfamicom]

I know Apple has open sourced many of the components of OS X, and was wondering, could you compile some of these for Leopard and (possibly) Tiger? I want to make my operating environment more secure, as I have begun to rely on PowerMacs and older Intel Macs more often. If you can, which ones would be essential to compile for enhanced security and compatibility? (also are there any updated Java VMs?)

 

[XaPHER]

Mac OS X branded components ( cocoa, carbon, non-gnu apps, etc.) are all closed-source, and with darwin by itself there's not much you can do. There's the kernel and modules (that's a NO), BSD/gnu userland utilities, the security framework, some gnu-based apps and services (cups, mDNSResponder, etc.).

Leopard-webkit is probably a good example of backporting software for the mac. And it looks scary to maintain.

If you want up-to-date userland tools, you should try macports instead (it has many GNU ones). There was the soylatte project that released java 6/7 builds for 10.5 ppc/i386, and for something solid that's not a good solution.

For security, except for the usual precautions, you have very few options.. Just avoid exposing the system needlessly.

It's a disappointing answer, but not much can be done for the "Mac OS X" part of the system. I may add though, part of this depend on how much time and effort you're willing to spend on getting things to work.

 

[wicknix]

I second using macports, as you can update "some" some stuff under the hood. At the very least update the bash shell.

Cheers.