Re: Ada OS based on Minix3

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On 10 Nov 2008 11:24:58 +0100, Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote:

> Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> 
>> It makes no sense to make yet another linux.
> 
> In a way, I agree.  But at the same time, I like to have the freedom
> to choose among several different, free/Open Source, POSIX compliant
> operating systems.

Freedom of choice assumes diversity. There is not much diversity in what is
called "modern" OSes. In recent time worked mainly with Windows, Linux,
VxWorks (before that I did with Sys V, VMS, Solaris). I just don't consider
them conceptually different. IMO it makes no sense to have another one like
these.

>> In my opinion an Ada OS, if there should be one, must be fully OO
>> and have native Ada interface.
> 
> Why should it necessarily be object oriented?

Because otherwise OS is damned to have a very low-level interface. The sad
consequence of this are poorly integrated OS-like additional storeys with a
huge overhead due to interface impedance. DBMS is one notorious example.
Others are numerous middlewares like CORBA etc. This architecture has no
future, IMO.

> I think the important part in writing an operating system is to figure
> out how you can do it "better".  If we want to write an operating
> system in Ada, we should consider how we can make a "better" operating
> system using that.  It seems that "better" in this case is
> reliability, maintenance and efficiency.

Yes, but note, you were talking about *non-functional* requirements, here.
It is placing a cart before the horse.

> I am not sure if this is
> done best using "full OO" or not.

OO is not a tool here, it is a goal, a *functional* requirement. Others are
to have it embeddable, heterogeneous, distributed, with persistent objects.

> Personally I appreciate standards compliance, so I would probably
> include a POSIX API on the feature list.

POSIX is on the top of the list ... of thing to scrap ...

>> In order to achieve this, much has to be done at the language level
>> first.
> 
> In the sense that the language should be changed?  (Would it still be
> Ada then? :-)

Sure. Ada means "designed to support the construction of long-lived, highly
reliable software systems" ARM 1/1.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de