`/var/lock` equivalent on OSX

Solution 1:

/private/var/run is the place for system/root level pid files to live on OSX (Darwin)

Locking is more complicated (or simple depending on your POV) with the system/API arbitrating device locks rather than writing them to the filesystem.

Do consider the implications of fast user switching and the documentation on Multiple User Environments or simply calling NSTemporaryDirectory if your locking happens in user space or the application can be fired up more than one at a time.

Solution 2:

Wherever you want to there is no standard place for lock files in Unix. Only the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard provides for /var/loc See Wikipaedia for some examples of the hierarchies used from there is FreeBsd

As for direct OSX references see NSDistributedLock which gives no directions or example of paths to be used and shlock which gives the BSD example in /tmp