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macOS Daemonology

Communicate with Daemons, Agents, and Helpers Through XPC

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Volodymyr Vashurkin

    1. Dnipro, Ukraine

    View author publications

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  • Understand macOS daemons—the world beyond shiny GUI apps
  • Use the flexibility and power of dameons and agents to build multicomponent applications
  • Dive into approaches and techniques of communication across processes using XPC connection

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Table of contents (16 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. Daemons in a wild

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Operating System Background World

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 3-14

    3. Daemon Anatomy

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 15-25

    4. Daemon Management

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 27-40

  3. Daemons in Detail

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 41-41
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    2. Daemons at a Glance

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 43-44

    3. Classic Daemon

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 45-48

    4. Privileged Helper

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 49-68

    5. System Extensions (Since macOS 10.15)

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 69-81

    6. User Agents

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 83-87

    7. XPC Services

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 89-93

    8. Login Items

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 95-102

  4. Talking to your daemons

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 103-103
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    2. XPC at a Glance

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 105-116

    3. Pass Objects by Copy Over XPC Using NSSecureCoding

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 117-123

    4. Pass Objects by Proxy: The Callable XPC Objects

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 125-130

    5. NSXPCListenerEndpoint: XPC Service Sharing

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 131-136

    6. XPC Security

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 137-144

    7. XPC and Swift

      • Volodymyr Vashurkin
      Pages 145-150
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Keywords

About this book

Take advantage of the full power of Swift through XPC. Development for macOS differs from iOS and web-based development because of multicomponent applications. Besides the usual GUI-based applications and app extensions, there are a wide range of daemons—processes that run in the background—to worry about. These include system monitoring, event listening, notification agents, and many-many more.

First, you'll take a tour around different types of daemons: user agents, privileged helpers, login items, XPC services, and System Extensions. Knowing key specifics of the daemons will open a wide range of possibilities from non-trivial application development to system development. You'll find lots of examples, working code samples, and even ready-to-use utilities. The book will guide you step-by-step through preparation, registration, and management of all kinds of daemons.


System Extensions are brand new for macOS and open additional powerful features for developers. You'll explore installation, user flow, and communication with System Extensions, too, with examples, of course. XPC provides an object-oriented way of communication. There’s no need for custom byte/text-based protocols. A good macOS developer has to know not only programming interfaces, but also design patterns related to technology. XPC communication has a few patterns of its own, and we'll go through them all, including uni- and bi-directional communication, passing objects by-value and by-proxy, handling connection invalidation, named and anonymous connections, and many more.


What You'll Learn
  • Use multiples types of daemons in your applications 
  • Deal with System Extensions – the new type of system daemons 
  • Get acquainted with Swift bridging patterns for XPC communication


Who This Book Is For


Software developers and solution architects with at least a working knowledge of macOS and Swift programming. As overview, may be interested for software/solution architects. 

Authors and Affiliations

  • Dnipro, Ukraine

    Volodymyr Vashurkin

About the author

Volodymyr Vashurkin (@alkenso) is an experienced macOS system and security developer and engineer. His first steps in daemonology were made while researching FileVault full disk encryption on macOS, and its interaction with iCloud services. iCloud on macOS uses plenty of system daemons and user agents, and investigating macOS’s infrastructure led to a solid understanding of how the background world of macOS works. This led him deeply into the development of security solutions for macOS. Working in the security area, Volodymyr gained practical skills for creating GUI-based applications with fewer user agents (user background processes) and root daemons (root'ed background processes). In developing his knowledge and skills, Volodymyr faced numerous tricky cases, lack of documentation, and minor and major documentation gaffes. He would like to help his readers avoid the same pitfalls.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: macOS Daemonology

  • Book Subtitle: Communicate with Daemons, Agents, and Helpers Through XPC

  • Authors: Volodymyr Vashurkin

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7277-0

  • Publisher: Apress Berkeley, CA

  • eBook Packages: Professional and Applied Computing, Apress Access Books, Professional and Applied Computing (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Volodymyr Vashurkin 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4842-7276-3Published: 08 October 2021

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-4842-7277-0Published: 07 October 2021

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIII, 154

  • Number of Illustrations: 34 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Apple and iOS

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