vmnet

Apple's vmnet.framework bindings for Rust.

Installation

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
vmnet = "0"

Usage

Ensure that your software either has an com.apple.vm.networking entitlement or is running with elevated privileges.

Start a NAT interface and receive some packets destined to it:

let shared_mode = Shared {
    subnet_options: None,
    ..Default::default()
};

let mut iface = Interface::new(Mode::Shared(shared_mode), Options::default()).unwrap();

let (tx, rx) = sync::mpsc::sync_channel(0);

iface.set_event_callback(Events::PACKETS_AVAILABLE, move |events, params| {
    if let Some(Parameter::EstimatedPacketsAvailable(pkts)) = params.get(ParameterKind::EstimatedPacketsAvailable) {
        tx.send(pkts);
    }
}).unwrap();

let pkts = rx.recv().unwrap();
println!("receiving {} packets...", pkts);
for _ in 0..pkts {
    let mut buf: [u8; 1514] = [0; 1514];
    println!("{:?}", iface.read(&mut buf));
}

drop(rx);
iface.finalize().unwrap();

Quirks

• due to Apple's usage of blocks as a way to retrieve API call results, some methods like set_event_callback() require the provided closure to have a 'static lifetime
  • this manifests itself in not being able to use Interface from such closure
  • however, this can be easily worked around by using interior mutability pattern or simply by using the callback as a signal carrier
• due to API_AVAILABLE macro not being supported it is assumed that this package is running on macOS 15.0 or newer