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As I understand it many Mac OS X command-line tools (like ls, cp, chmod, chown etc.) are imported from FreeBSD.

  • Which version of FreeBSD contains the command-line tools most compatible with the OS X ones?
  • What are important differences?
  • Are some of the tools imported from different systems (NetBSD, GNU...)?

My intention is to build a free environment which would contain command-line tools closest to Mac OS X for testing simple shell scripts behaviour in Mac OS X like environment. The filesytem structure, devices or other aspects do not need to be similar.

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You probably want to run some variant of Darwin, probably PureDarwin, rather than FreeBSD.

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  • Thank you. I know that PureDarwin exists but at least for the beginning I would prefer something with a wider community sacrificing the level of compatibility. In this phase probably the best would be to be able to compile the command-line tools on Linux. Commented Aug 29, 2013 at 9:07
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I'd say the OSX tools are closest to the OSX tools. They are open source, you can download the source directly from Apple:

http://opensource.apple.com/

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  • Thank you :) Do they compile without problems on FreeBSD? Commented Aug 29, 2013 at 8:46
  • Right now I am trying to compile some tools on Linux but I am missing some header files like membership.h. I hope that on FreeBSD I will be more successful. Commented Aug 29, 2013 at 9:21
  • Yes, I imagine they'd be more likely to compile with FreeBSD. Commented Aug 29, 2013 at 11:15

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