Experimental OS development using D

[Harry Vennik]

Graham St Jack Wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:37:09 +0000, Harry Vennik wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I announced this project just a little more than one year ago, but then
> > I had to stop it right away because of some personal problems. Recently
> > I picked it up again, but to really gain any progress, I really need
> > help from one or more real D gurus, as there is one very essential
> > problem I cannot solve myself.
> 
> You might want to take a look at this other project that sounds very 
> similar:
> http://www.slate-project.org/start
> 

It has some similarity indeed, but a very big difference is that they plan to use the Linux kernel, which is a monolithic kernel. As mentioned, OKL4 is a microkernel. At the higher level I might be able to co-operate with Slate if other design decisions are less far apart.

> > 
> > I'd like to build my OS on top of the OKL4 microkernel from Open Kernel
> > Labs. That microkernel is written in C and C++, but in my OS, everything
> > running on top of it should be in D. (Although it might be that I use
> > some existing servers at first, and replace them by D-implementations
> > later.)
> > 
> > Now I'd like to have automated code generation for IPC, without using
> > IDL. I.e. i want to be able to simply code a D interface and then have
> > some way to expose that interface to be called through IPC, without the
> > need to write the actual IPC code over and over again for each
> > interface. Ideally the IPC code would be compatible to code generated
> > from IDL through magpie, as such would allow D-clients to call C-servers
> > and vice versa, this is not a requirement however.
> > 
> > Currently I feel like this is the most difficult part to code of the
> > whole OS (maybe just because I do have quite some knowledge about OSes,
> > but almost nothing about compilers and code generation...)
> > 
> > Anyone interested to help me to get this done?
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > Harry
> > 
> > == Quote from John Reimer (terminal.node at gmail.com)'s article
> >> On Thu, 04 Jan 2007 17:36:26 -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website
> >> For Email) wrote:
> >> > Harry Vennik wrote:
> >> >> Is there anyone here who is interested in working with me to get
> >> >> that project going, and help by contributing in the development of a
> >> >> specification and/or in implementation of those (including
> > PoC
> >> >> coding)?
> >> >
> >> > Just in case nobody has mentioned it: a small and elegant UNIX kernel
> >> > to use as a source of inspiration is Minix 3
> >> > (http://www.minix3.org/).
> >> >
> >> > I've seen Tanenbaum talking about it, and Minix 3 is a fresh new
> >> > approach to OS design featuring high modularity: the kernel itself
> >> > boasts only 4000 lines of code. It would be interesting to see how
> >> > that translates in D.
> >> >
> >> > Andrei
> >> Very interesting!
> >> I'll download the svn source and check it out. :) -JJR
>