There are multiple ways to install software on macOS, and our aim is to make all of them work on Darling as well. However there currently are a few limitations, mainly the lack of GUI.

Unlike Wine, Darling can run software that's installed on an existing macOS installation on the same computer. This is possible thanks to the way application bundles (.app-s) work on macOS and Darling.

To use an app that's already installed, you just need to locate the existing installation (e.g. /Volumes/SystemRoot/run/media/username/Macintosh HD/Applications/SomeApp.app) and run the app from there.

Many apps for macOS are distributed as .dmg (disk image) files that contain the .app bundle inside. Under macOS, you would click the DMG to mount it and then drag the .app to your Applications folder to copy it there.

Under Darling, use hdiutil attach SomeApp.dmg to mount the DMG (the same command works on macOS too), and then copy the .app using cp:

Darling [~]$ hdiutil attach Downloads/SomeApp.dmg
/Volumes/SomeApp
Darling [~]$ cp -r /Volumes/SomeApp/SomeApp.app /Applications/

Some apps are distributed as archives instead of disk images. To install such an app, unpack the archive using the appropriate CLI tools and copy the .app to /Applications.

Many apps are only available via Apple's Mac App Store. To install such an application in Darling, download the app from a real App Store (possibly running on another computer) and copy the .app over to Darling.

Many apps use .pkg, the native package format of macOS, as their distribution format. It's not enough to simply copy the contents of a package somewhere, they are really meant to be installed and can run arbitrary scripts during installation.

Under macOS, you would use the graphical Installer.app or the command-line installer utility to install this kind of packages. You can do the latter under Darling as well:

Darling [~]$ installer -pkg mc-4.8.7-0.pkg -target /

Unlike macOS, Darling also has the uninstaller command, which lets you easily uninstall packages.

There are many third-party package managers for macOS, the most popular one being Homebrew. Ultimately, we want to make it possible to use all the existing package managers with Darling, however, some may not work well right now.

We have found that the Rudix Package Manager works well. Follow instructions on their website to install Rudix itself; you can then use it to install many common Unix utilities, such as wget and mc:

Darling [~]$ sudo rudix install wget mc