Re: Porting to macOS

[Stefano Brivio <sbrivio@redhat.com>]

Hi,

On Tue, 10 Sep 2024 16:15:33 -0400
DUO Labs <dvdugo333@gmail.com> wrote:

> I started doing some preliminary work on porting passt to macOS

That's great to hear!

> (I would have responded to issue 6 directly, but I can't seem to make an
> account);

Sorry for that, you should have your request confirmation email now.

I'm reviewing those manually as we have botnets sending automated
account requests for seemingly no benefit, so they might be a bit
delayed from time to time.

> however, I wanted to know how exactly the system works ---
> does it _require_ a tap device, or can I safely remove that file from
> the compilation target (I know that pasta requires it, though)?

passt itself doesn't need a tap device, but note that tap.c is a bit of
a misnomer: it refers to anything guest/container side (be it a UNIX
domain socket, a pre-opened file, or an actual tuntap network
interface).

I guess a reasonable way forward would be to conditionally disable
pasta-related functions, in tap.c and elsewhere, for non-Linux targets
(perhaps easier: conditionally enable them for Linux?).

That is, you won't need tap_handler_pasta() and friends, but you'll need
tap_handler_passt().

-- 
Stefano