From: Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>
Subject: Re: Operating System in Ada (was Ada --> C Translation)
Date: 1998/10/13
Date: 1998-10-13T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9810131617001.16284-100000@shell5.ba.best.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 6vvlkq$k68$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com
On Tue, 13 Oct 1998 dennison@telepath.com wrote:
> In article <Pine.BSF.4.02A.9810121002380.15516-100000@shell5.ba.best.com>,
> Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com> wrote:
>
> > silly to do so since Unix users expect C APIs. OTOH, a complete new OS
> > functionally similar to Unix/NT/VMS/AS4000/... in Ada would be an
> > interesting research project. It can obviously be done, since Ada-95
> > provides all of the capabilities of C, and much more. So, like Dale, I
>
> As a (part-time) C.S. graduate student I suppose I'm in a position to take on
> such a project, but I have to say I don't see what the value of it would be.
> It might be somewhat interesting to folks here that it had been done. But why
> would anyone else care in the slightest?
It would depend of course on what you implemented. I didn't say that if
you just implemented some vanilla OS that the world would suddenly accept
Ada as an obviously superior (to me at least ;-) system implementation
language.
> I picture the conversation going something like this:
> Me : Hey, I just implemented my own Operating System!
> Other person : Yeah? What's it do?
> Me : Well....nothing really. But I wrote it in Ada!!
Well, here is where you have to differentiate what you are planning to
write from what already exists. How about writing a research OS where the
answer to that question is something, rather than "nothing really", for
some value of something. No one cares if you implement something that
already exists in Ada.
Now the interesting question becomes what that "something" is supposed to
be. Let me suggest Ted that you add EROS to the list of OSes you're
looking at (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~eros/) as well as its ancestor
KeyKOS (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~KeyKOS/) and some others like AS400 and
the defunct GNU Hurd.
> For anyone really interested in toying with this, I have two references that
> may be handy. "Operating System Design, The XINU Approach" by Douglas Comer
> and Timothy Fossum implements and explains (and provides) the code for a
> small Unix-like OS that will run on a PC clone. "The Oberon System" by (I
> believe) Martin Reiser and Niklaus Wirth goes over the design and code for a
> small Object-Oriented OS (and compiler!).
If you want to do a Unix-like OS, there is no point in exactly duplicating
Unix. Rather, think of some features of Unix OSes which would be better
implemented in Ada 95, like STREAMS, and take it from there.
-- Brian
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1998-10-13 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 40+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1998-09-20 0:00 Win CE target William A Whitaker
1998-09-20 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-20 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-20 0:00 ` Tucker Taft
1998-09-21 0:00 ` dennison
1998-09-21 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-28 0:00 ` Ada --> C Translation, was: " Stefan Helfert
1998-09-29 0:00 ` Robert A Duff
1998-10-10 0:00 ` Dr Amirez
1998-10-11 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough
1998-10-10 0:00 ` Dr Amirez
1998-10-11 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough
1998-10-11 0:00 ` Dr Amirez
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Niklas Holsti
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-10-13 0:00 ` dennison
1998-10-12 0:00 ` dennison
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-10-14 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-10-14 0:00 ` Andi Kleen
1998-10-12 0:00 ` PC
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Operating System in Ada (was Ada --> C Translation) Larry Kilgallen
1998-10-12 0:00 ` dennison
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Chris Morgan
1998-10-13 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough
1998-10-13 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-10-14 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-10-13 0:00 ` dennison
1998-10-13 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff [this message]
1998-10-13 0:00 ` Tucker Taft
1998-10-21 0:00 ` Van Snyder
1998-10-22 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1998-10-13 0:00 ` Ada --> C Translation, was: Win CE target Robert I. Eachus
1998-10-14 0:00 ` Samuel Mize
1998-10-16 0:00 ` Tasking/blocking system calls (was: Ada --> C Translation) Mats Weber
1998-09-29 0:00 ` Ada --> C Translation, was: Win CE target Tucker Taft
1998-09-30 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-23 0:00 ` falis
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