Re: OOP Language for OS Development

[Philippe Ribet <p.ribet@tele2.fr>]

Brian_Heilig wrote:

> Eiffel Cons (related to OSes):
> There is no turnkey Eiffel compiler for you to use for operating
> systems. All the current compilers are system-oriented, that is, they
> generate systems, which for example have command-line arguments and
> garbage collectors. Unless I'm mistaken this is probably the show
> stopper.
Using SmartEiffel should not be a problem. -no_main option may help.
The garbage collector can be turned off. Then the memory job is limited 
to se_malloc/se_realloc.

> I'm pretty sure it is impossible to write an entire OS completely in
> Eiffel. Number one reason, Eiffel has no method for declaring
> interrupt handlers. The good news is that Eiffel integrates with other
> languages easily (C for example which has an interrupt keyword).
> If efficiency is your number one priority Eiffel may not be for you.
> SmartEiffel and ISE Eiffel generate very efficient code, but I don't
> think it meets the demands of a CPU scheduler, for example.
I did some testing on computationnal code (matix multiplication). Code 
generated by SmartEiffel had exactly the same performance as the same C 
program. But never forget, each time you need extreme performance or 
very specific instructions, you can use C code (inline or external 
function call). This mean you can use assembler too when you really need 
(context swith, hardware access).

-- 
Philippe Ribet



                          The README file said
               "Requires Windows 95, NT 4.0, or better."
                     So... I installed it on Linux!