Re: Ada OS Kernel features

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

Help me pound the drum some more: KEEP THE GOALS TO SOMETHING ACHIEVABLE!
:-)

If it is possible to leave the design open-ended enough so that a later
revision can support more general requirements, then O.K. This ought to be
reasonably simple since we're all experts in the notion of abstraction &
information hiding. If there is a memory manager package that hides the
details of what kind of memory is there and where does it reside and all
that, it should be easy to replace the body with something that supports
whatever you like. But the first cut ought to go towards a simple, common
architecture.

Think PC as the first target. Think "embeddable" since if all you have is a
basic core (no file system, no elaborate GUI stuff, etc.) you still have
something that can be *used* in real world apps. If there were some core
piece of an OS that could boot on a PC from a floppy and maybe do some
simple command-line communication through a serial port then you'd have
something that was embeddable & runable on an old PC where a hobbyist could
have something to work with. That gets the "Quixote OS" a *LOT* farther than
all the wonderful, theoretical OS's floating around in the minds of many
engineers.

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/


"Brian Catlin" <briancatlin@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:9n5m26$tb6$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net...
>
> True, but how many people that would be participating in the
implementation of
> the Ada OS have access to such machines?  Supporting these machines
initially
> would require quite a bit of effort, and might be biting off more than we
can
> chew.  Perhaps adding support for them  later in the project would be
better
> (yes, I know that it will require lots of rework, but if the project is
too big
> initially, it will never get started)
>