Re: ADA os talk

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

You might. But I don't know that RTEMS provides exactly what you might want
for writing a whole OS. I've never dealt with RTEMS in any practical sense,
but my impression was that it was essentially an RTK and some utilities that
made it possible to take something like GNAT and run it on a bare machine.
You're talking about a single process/multiple task program that uses Posix
calls to do all the tasking work. (RTEMS implementing the Posix calls, that
is to say.)

While something like this certainly has its place in the world, you have to
wonder if this is the proper starting point for a "Clean Slate" operating
system - especially where you want to target things more in the
"Workstation" family rather than the "Missile Guidance System" family. Do
you want to be stuck with its scheduling algorithm for tasks? Can it be
"grown" to have genuine processes? Do you want to be stuck using Posix calls
or would you rather have something else? All those are interesting technical
questions. And we have not yet brought up any of the licensing questions and
what that might mean.

I'm not saying this would be a bad idea - just that it would require someone
more expert in operating systems than myself looking seriously at RTEMS and
what the ultimate objective is and deciding how good a match they are.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Wes Groleau" <wwgrol@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> wrote in message
news:3B8A9459.13ADA07D@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com...
>
> I still don't understand why you couldn't take RTEMS or something like
> and add the features needed by a non-embedded OS.  Which is almost
> what Marin was saying in the part I snipped.
>