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Airlock – crash isolation for Swift on macOS without fork()

Airlock is a Swift library that provides crash isolation for macOS applications without relying on fork(), allowing developers to run untrusted code safely by isolating it in a separate process.

Background

- Airlock is a new Swift library by Maxim Kotliar that lets developers run untrusted code safely inside a sandboxed helper process, even though macOS has deprecated the traditional `fork()` system call. - On macOS, Apple has been discouraging `fork()` (used by many sandboxing tools), so Airlock uses `posix_spawn()` instead — a more modern, macOS-friendly way to launch a child process. - The key idea is "crash isolation": if the sandboxed code crashes or does something malicious, the main app stays alive. This is similar to how web browsers run each tab in a separate process. - This matters for macOS developers who need to run user-supplied plugins, scripts, or AI-generated code without risking the stability or security of their app.

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