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Leopard Guides
Darwin is the UNIX technology-based foundation of Mac OS X. Darwin integrates several technologies. Among the most important are 4.4BSD-based operating-system services (built on the Mach 3.0 microkernel), the I/O Kit, networking facilities, and support for multiple integrated file systems. Developers can use Darwin to port UNIX/Linux applications and create kernel extensions.

A guided introduction and learning path for developers new to Darwin.   Essential information for developers working in the Darwin environment.   C and Objective-C API references organized by framework.
Darwin Topics
View the complete Darwin Guides List.
Low-level interfaces for obtaining information about files and directories.   Open source programming interfaces that support access to devices.   Developer support for optimizing UNIX-based code for Intel-based Macs.

Communication between processes using BSD layer APIs.   The most fundamental layer of the Mac OS X operating system.   Low-level open source networking and communication technologies.

Resources for measuring, evaluating, and improving Darwin code performance.   Guidance in adapting low-level code and drivers to the Darwin platform.   Low-level routines for managing resources such as power and memory.

Facilities to prepare low-level code for execution and support it at execution time.   Security-related programming techniques for the lowest level of Mac OS X.   Open source developer tools such as GCC and GDB.