Nick Desaulniers is a Linux kernel developer at Google, best known for compiling the Linux kernel with LLVM/Clang. Recently he started experimenting with compiling the Linux kernel on the macOS platform.

According to his recent email, Nick Desaulniers has successfully compiled the ARM64 Linux kernel on his Apple M2 MacBook Air (running macOS 12.5.1 “Monterey”).

According to reports, Nick Desaulniers used his own build of LLVM/Clang and obtained some dependencies through Homebrew. Based on these conditions, he was able to compile the Linux kernel under macOS – of course this does not mean that the Linux kernel can be used on macOS. But for if you just want to develop and build/smoke test on Apple M1/M2 – this Linux support is enough.

Nick Desaulniers has released a patch in development that includes the necessary changes to perform a successful build. The patch still needs to be cleaned up and cut before it may be submitted upstream in the future.