Re: Projects in the Hurd

[Tom Hart]

I've been looking at the Hurd for my undergrad topics course.

One question my Prof has posed to me is, "How could a program like 
Apache, which is highly-threaded and servicing multiple HTTP requests, 
bet better implemented under a multi-server system such as GNU/Hurd?"

In addition, we've found looking forward to L4-Hurd to be quite 
interesting, since Dr. Liedtke had some very good ideas about 
microkernels. Also, the Hurd community, along with other multi-server 
projects (ie. SawMill and icky-proprietary QNX) have a lot of 
documentation on the advantages of multi-server systems.

We've also been thinking about how the code for utilities like APT could 
be trimmed in the presence of a system that supports translators; then, 
APT wouldn't need any code specific to FTP/HTTP/FILE/CD-ROM, since the 
translators could be the only part of the system that see the difference.

W.r.t. programs with translators, of course, this (superior) style of 
programming couldn't come about at present, since people would still 
want APT to work on systems based on Linux and *BSD kernels. Something 
I've been thinking is, I don't see how translators are inseperably tied 
to multi-servers. Couldn't a Linux or *BSD kernel be hacked to support 
translators?

Now, maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here, but it seems to me that 
if translators could be ported to these systems, then:
1. It would make it easier for programmers to move to a Hurdish style of 
programming while the Hurd is still stabilizing;
2. The Hurd would get good publicity, since the translator mechanism is 
a very good idea, and it came from the Hurd developers; and
3. There would be a bigger pool of people helping to solve the problems 
translators introduce (I'm thinking of discussions on the mailing lists 
involving UnionFS, for instance).

Well, that's my brain dump. I hope it gives you guys some stuff to think 
about. Good luck with the dissertations! =)

Bharata B Rao wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We are looking for projects for our MS dissertation course. We want to know if 
> there we can do something in the Hurd which will be useful. We went through the 
> tasklist at savannah, but we are not sure if it is uptodate.
>
> Could you inform us about any significant things that need to be done in the 
> Hurd, which we can take up ? We have written code for Linux kernel and have 
> reasonable understanding of the Linux kernel.
>
> Please CC the replies.
> Regards,
> Bharata.

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   /                                               |
  /  Tom Hart                                      |
 |   hartte13@BrandonU.ca                          |
  \  "rmTFM - Build consistent interfaces."        |
   \_______________________________________________|