Re: Moving forward (was L4Hurd at Sourceforge)

[Jeroen Dekkers]

On Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 12:17:43AM +0200, Niels M?ller wrote:
> Ian Duggan <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > > Do we have to use oskit at all? If so, I'd prefer that its use be
> > > purely optional, e.g. for single (non-essential) user-level tasks
> > 
> > I guess not. It's a part of the fiasco CVS right now. I don't know what
> > the interdependencies are. Since we are using Hazelnut, I guess it isn't
> > important at the moment.
> 
> Some device drivers will be needed quite soon (as outlined by Farid).
> To me, it seems like the best way to do a device driver is as an L4
> task, linked with the oskit libraries. If these L4 tasks can later be
> upgraded to Hurd processes, the Hurd gets real user space device
> drivers.

I think anything what we do now will be a hack to get it working, doing
it the Right Way will going to take too much time.

> Whether or not the l4 kernel should use the OS kit is a different
> question. My guess is no.

I don't know if the booting code is considered part of L4. Looking at
hazelnut, they don't think that. The rmgr however uses oskit code (it's
precompiled in apps/rmgr/lib). We should use every piece of code we can
use from oskit or other things IMHO.

> Another potential oskit user is the pager.

I'm not sure what you want to get from oskit, or want you just an
initial pager and later write a good one?

> > 
> > It sounds like a nice idea if I am understanding it correctly. My only
> > question is if this is maybe biting off more than we can chew initially.
> > Would this distract from the initial goal of Hurd on L4?
> 
> I'm feeling the same way. The general L4 vk might be nice to have, but
> it's not a primary goal, at least not now.

It will never be my goal, running the hurd on a monolithic kernel is
worse than running it on mach, but I'm not standing in somebody's way if
he wants to do it.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
"all the _really_ interesting stuff will be going on in user space."
        --Linus Torvalds
"just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people."
        --Linus Torvalds, "I was never a "big thinker""

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