Has anyone tried Minix3 + Ada?

Has anyone tried Minix3 + Ada?

[Patrick]

I am trying to learn more about how operating systems work. I am playing with Minix3. I have GCC  4.4 installed now but there is no Ada support. I might try to compile 4.7 with Ada support but I am concerned it will be futile. 

Assuming that I can cross compile GCC for Minix3, is there any reason Ada would not run on it?

Minix3 does not have kernel threads, the threading is in userland. I am wondering if tasking will work.

Minix is also billed as a high reliability, embedded OS but I can't find any examples of it being used for this. Does anyone know if this is a proper claim or a goal?

Thanks for reading-Patrick

Re: Has anyone tried Minix3 + Ada?

[Jacob Sparre Andersen]

Patrick wrote:

> I am trying to learn more about how operating systems work. I am
> playing with Minix3. I have GCC 4.4 installed now but there is no Ada
> support. I might try to compile 4.7 with Ada support but I am
> concerned it will be futile.

Why?  IIRC Minix3 has a reasonably complete POSIX API, so I wouldn't
worry much about getting the GNAT runtime to compile.

> Assuming that I can cross compile GCC for Minix3, is there any reason
> Ada would not run on it?

Lacks in the Minix3 POSIX API.  But according to what I've heard, it
should be complete enough.

> Minix3 does not have kernel threads, the threading is in userland. I
> am wondering if tasking will work.

I'm pretty sure it will.

> Minix is also billed as a high reliability, embedded OS but I can't
> find any examples of it being used for this. Does anyone know if this
> is a proper claim or a goal?

I think it is a matter of your POV.  It is designed to be
"self-repairing".  The design of Minix3 means that you are likely to
have more context switches than with a more monolithic OS.  This again
means that it requires more resources.  Which turns into higher energy
consumption, which usually isn't popular for embedded applications.  I
doubt that Minix3 is easy to use for real-time tasks, due to the
large(r) number of processes involved in most OS activities.

Greetings,

Jacob (who hasn't tried Minix3 yet)
-- 
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Re: Has anyone tried Minix3 + Ada?

[Patrick]

Thanks Jacob

Yup. Minix3 looks heavy for embedded work, but it looks good for learning purposes. If the high reliability is true, it might be a nice pair with Ada in an embedded application that that is powered from the grid.

Have a great day-Patrick

Re: Has anyone tried Minix3 + Ada?

[quiet_lad]

On Jun 11, 6:06 am, Patrick <patr...@spellingbeewinnars.org> wrote:
> Thanks Jacob
>
> Yup. Minix3 looks heavy for embedded work, but it looks good for learning purposes. If the high reliability is true, it might be a nice pair with Ada in an embedded application that that is powered from the grid.
>
> Have a great day-Patrick

minix 3 might not be as battle tested as free/net/open-bsd or
archlinux.
Minix 3 I like idea, but short hardware list is tuff, and in terms of
reliablility software raid and trunking of 2+ nics into 1 virtual nic
on unixes I mentioned seem to help with hardware failing.  I am not
sure about solaris, but smartos and illumian are available free as
well.