Linux Kernel in D?

Whatsthisnow via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Sat Dec 17 19:05:13 PST 2016


On Sunday, 18 December 2016 at 00:10:47 UTC, sarn wrote:
> On Friday, 16 December 2016 at 16:12:38 UTC, D.Rex wrote:
>> A D port of the Linux Kernel?
>>
>> https://github.com/whatsthisnow/ProjectD
>>
>> Any thoughts on the project?
>
> Depends on how strictly you want to reimplement GNU/Linux, or 
> whether something Posix-y is enough.
>
> Anyway, a D "libc" would be really awesome.  Something like 
> Newlib in pure D would be great for OS programming in D.

I am basing the kernel on Linux because, well, I like Linux, and 
its the only complete kernel with free source that I currently 
know of.  Given that it is widely
Used as an OS kernel, it kinda made sense to port it, give it a 
new engine under the hood so to speak.  I would like to keep it 
as close to the original as possible such that linux programmers 
will still have a generally familiar environment to work with, 
rather than having to learn an entirely new kernel.

As far as GlibD, well the point of the project is to give Linux, 
as a I said before, a metaphorical new engine under the hood, so 
it wouldn't be sensible to not convert libc and the coreutils etc 
to D as well since Linux requires them.  Plus, this might be a 
good opportunity for the community, as well as the creators of D, 
to incorporate some features into the kernel that would benefit 
the D language itself.  I think i remember reading somewhere, 
someone (maybe one of the creators) stated that garbage 
collection should be done in the Kernel, well I think this would 
be a perfect opportunity to test that as an experimental feature. 
  Possibly pull GC out of the D libraries and put it in the kernel 
for this project.

Anyway, thats some of my thoughts on the project.


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