No, a fools errand is to buy a Mac and use GNU/Linux tooling instead of the official OS X SDK tooling.

GDB stop being part of the official modern SDKs quite long time ago.

I understand that gdb is not part of the official SDK. I would expect an OS in widespread use to not break userspace and when it does, take substantial remedial action to fix / patch widely used applications.

The onus is on gdb developers to keep up with the OS API changes, not the other way around.

Gives a fairly balanced view of the picture - http://www.infoworld.com/article/2988096/mac-os-x/sorry-unix... .

As I can not edit my comment any longer, examples how Tru64 made use of Security Integration Architecture, are described on the "Security Programming" guide, http://h41361.www4.hpe.com/docs/base_doc/DOCUMENTATION/V51B_...

OS X isn't the first UNIX to have a constrained root.

Safety conscious UNIXes like Tru64 did it first.

If the changes are well documented and communicated ahead of time, then sure I agree with you. Am also curious now what Apple uses to run cloud services - ie do they use OSX as a server operating system themselves.

Well, https://www.apple.com/macos/server/