Top all-time · #1798
Saagar Jha
Personal blog · saagarjha.com/blog · on HN as saagarjhaprogrammingsystems
Saagar Jha's personal blog at saagarjha.com covers programming and systems. Since 2018, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 63 times, most often “Thoughts on macOS Package Managers”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (19) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Saagar Jha's posts on macOS internals, iOS JIT and security, and macOS package managers (Homebrew vs MacPorts). Some comments praise the private-logging and package-manager posts.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- Called detailed and informative, with a step-by-step gdb walkthrough; one favourite macOS read. Summarises feelings on package managers better than commenter co
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 19 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Saagar Jha's website.
Most-linked posts?
- Thoughts on macOS Package Managers11 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2019-04-29
- Designing a better strcpy8 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2020-04-13
- We at $Famous_company switched to $Hyped_technology6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-05-11
- Swift Concurrency Waits for No One4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-12-23
- Bypassing Objc_msgSend4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-12-17
- Jailed Just-in-Time Compilation on iOS4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-02-24
- /blog/2020/11/08/fixing-section-2-5-2/2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-11-08
- /blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-package-managers/2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-06-06
What Hacker News says?
wait a sec...I recognize that name. I only know how to enable private logging thanks to your detailed and informative blog post! Seriously, it's one of the favorite macOS things I've read in a while. I loved the step by step walk through using gdb you showed. Though just today I saw that apparently an enterprise policy config can enable private logging in 10.15.3+ without having to disable SIP. https://georgegarside…
Comment linking /blog/2019/09/29/making-os-log-public-on-macos-catalina/
on “MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?”Submitted We at $Famous_company switched to $Hyped_technology as a story · 1224 points
HN discussionI dual booted on the new Samsung Chromebook 3: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/03/13/dual-booting-chrome-os...
Comment linking /blog/2019/03/13/dual-booting-chrome-os-and-elementary-os/
on “Thinkpad X210”Submitted We at $Famous_company Switched to $Hyped_technology as a story · 258 points
HN discussionJekyll has a plug-in (jekyll-feed) for adding an Atom feed, which is what I use for my website: https://saagarjha.com/feed.xml
Comment linking /feed.xml
on “Please Add RSS Support to Your Site”Submitted Jailed Just-in-Time Compilation on iOS as a story · 165 points
HN discussionHere’s a blog post from April 2019 on package managers on macOS. [1] The author, saagarjha (who also comments here regularly), switched from homebrew to MacPorts. A more current update to this post would probably be more helpful. In my limited experience, I’ve tried homebrew a few times, but found it a bit cumbersome with the “no sudo” requirement. [1]: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-pack...
Comment linking /blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-package-managers/
on “Homebrew 3.0”Submitted Designing a better strcpy as a story · 127 points
HN discussionI worked on the iSH appeal, and have of course watched this space for years, so I've gotten very familiar with the "spirit of the law" to the point that the conversation with Apple ended up really being a confirmation that our interpretation of the law was correct and that iSH was fine under the rules that Apple enforces. Your characterization isn't quite right. Apple doesn't want to not have apps that allow users t…
Comment linking /blog/2020/11/08/fixing-section-2-5-2/
on “Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program”Submitted Thoughts on macOS Package Managers as a story · 124 points
HN discussionI disagree, because they return a value that nobody really wants and thus perform poorly: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/04/12/designing-a-better-str...
Comment linking /blog/2020/04/12/designing-a-better-strcpy/
on “Tell HN: C Experts Panel – Ask us anything about C”Submitted Wiring Your House for Networking as a story · 49 points
HN discussionI recently looked at a number of string copying functions, as well as came up with an API a bit similar to yours: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/04/12/designing-a-better-str... (mine indicates overflow more clearly). memccpy, which is coming in C2X, makes designing these kinds of things finally possible.
Comment linking /blog/2020/04/12/designing-a-better-strcpy/
on “Tell HN: C Experts Panel – Ask us anything about C”Submitted Making Friends with AttributeGraph as a story · 43 points
HN discussionTo me it appears they admit that iSH allows scripting (ummm, obviously), and that scripting is against Apple’s policy (as we all know). From one of their articles: “Soon after we released iSH without apk, we found users who had figured out a way to get apk back using wget and were posting about this throughout the internet”. They argue that Apple’s policy should be changed to allow scripting: https://saagarjha.com/b…
Comment linking /blog/2020/11/08/fixing-section-2-5-2/
on “About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store”Submitted Designing a Better Strcpy as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThese are linked in the post, but I'm pulling them out as a top-level comment so you can focus your discussion on those. Theodore on how the App Review process could be improved: https://tbodt.com/2020/11/08/app-review-experiences.html Ramblings I wrote on why I believe the guideline iSH was pulled under was incorrectly applied and needs to be rewritten: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/11/08/fixing-section-2-5-2/ Re…
Comment linking /blog/2020/11/08/fixing-section-2-5-2/
on “About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store”Submitted Mac App Store Sandbox Escape as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/05/10/why-we-at-famous-compa...
Comment linking /blog/2020/05/10/why-we-at-famous-company-switched-to-hyped-technology/
on “Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com”Submitted Designing a Better Strcpy as a story · 4 points
HN discussionCome on, you know me better than that. In this case, the comment fit the conversation. The original comment was a short, pithy, and rather sarcastic one that was, nonetheless, correct. They pointed out that we need to write higher-Quality software, in order to give folks like the NSO people fewer “hooks.” The NSO folks are smart, dedicated people, that, in other circumstances, we would admire for their creativity an…
Comment linking /blog/2023/12/22/swift-concurrency-waits-for-no-one/
on “US judge finds NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp”Submitted Designing a Better `strcpy` as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAnother HN user did a write up on Homebrew[1] that I agree with. My main gripe is that Homebrew would regularly break my Python virtualenvs with linking errors. Meanwhile on Linux, I have virtualenvs that I created 9 years ago that still just work. These days you might be able to sidestep that issue by not using Python from Homebrew at all, but installing and managing it with Pyenv instead. [1] https://saagarjha.com…
Comment linking /blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-package-managers/
on “macOS Nix setup: an alternative to Homebrew (2020)”Submitted Swift Concurrency Waits for No One as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThere is an opt-in developer mode on iOS. You can compile and install any software you want on your own iPad; no paid Apple developer account needed. There’s even a way to get W^X memory regions on iOS by abusing ptrace: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/02/23/jailed-just-in-time-co... It can’t be submitted to the App Store or deployed with TestFlight, but you can build and install an app using that hack just fine on…
Comment linking /blog/2020/02/23/jailed-just-in-time-compilation-on-ios/
on “Temptation of the Apple: Dolphin on macOS M1”Submitted Swift Concurrency Waits for No One as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis is the article that prompted me to give it a try, and summarises my feelings better than I could: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-pack...
Comment linking /blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-package-managers/
on “Docker for Mac M1 RC”Submitted Bypassing Objc_msgSend as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> You are using users in plural. Because I am talking about people who use Macs in general? > Macs are not typically used as multi user machines. Certainly not by developers. There are developers who share Macs: not everyone can afford to have a computer to themself. But that's still beside the point: regardless of the number of humans using the computer, Macs still have multiple permission levels, and there is alwa…
Comment linking /blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-package-managers/
on “macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl”Submitted Thoughts on macOS Package Managers as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
