macOS Kernel reference?

[grimreaper1377]

Hi,

After reading this post on setting modifying keyboard backlight/screen brightness/etc., I was wondering if there was some kind of reference for kernel methods, such as IOKit.

Thanks.

 

[lee1210]

Amit Singh is one of the most prolific researchers in this area. Is website is at:
http://www.kernelthread.com/

The page you linked is for his book that discusses a number of the OS X internals.

Otherwise, there are a few others that work on this sort of thing:
http://www.osnews.com/story/10366

-Lee

 

[grimreaper1377]

So I guess there's no "actual" reference for Darwin?

 

[Krevnik]

So I guess there's no "actual" reference for Darwin?

For public drivers/APIs, yes. Apple has it posted online and includes it with XCode's documentation sets.

For private drivers and APIs specific to Apple's features they use like the keyboard backlight... no. That is more something you need to reverse engineer.

 

[grimreaper1377]

I guess reverse engineering is the way to go.

 

[lee1210]

As long as you don't mind the risk of any system update breaking your code.

I don't mean to discourage, you should pursue what you like, but I think your expectations should be set properly. Using an undocumented function means you have no guarantee that it will work after the next security update, etc. Most things are probably safe, but you're taking a risk.

-Lee