Apple Releases Darwin 6.5 Source

Apple developers have made available the source code to version 6.5 of Darwin, the BSD UNIX operating system that serves as the core to Mac OS X. Darwin 6.5 corresponds to the recently released Mac OS X version 10.2.5.

Although Darwin binaries are issued for major Mac OS X revisions, Darwin 6.5 constitutes a source-only update designed specifically for developers.

"Darwin 6.5 is what we call an 'on-cycle' source-code release, where the corresponding Darwin source is made available soon after a new release of Mac OS X to customers," Apple's Darwin Team wrote in a news posting. "Several projects (e.g., gcc, gdb, CUPS, Rendezvous) will continue to do 'off-cycle' releases, where the source code is updated more frequently than our commercial releases."

Developers can download the Darwin 6.5 source via CVS or Apple's Open Source Web site. Binary versions of Darwin 6.02 are available for those looking to install the UNIX operating system via CD.