Re: Ada OS based on Minix3

[xavier grave <xavier.grave@ipno.in2p3.fr>]

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Cedric.Lannock a �crit :
> Hi all,
> 
> I came across Ada at the beginning of the year and read quite a few
> books about Ada. A few month later I joined a Linux workgroup within a
> local computer association. This way I learned about Ada and had a
> look into Tanenbaum's book on operating systems (http://www.amazon.com/
> Operating-Systems-Implementation-Prentice-Software/dp/0131429388/
> ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226066518&sr=8-1) and Minix 3
> (http://www.minix3.org/).
> 
> I thought about an operating system written fully in Ada. When surfing
> the net I came across the various discussions about that subject.
> 
> What taking the Minix 3 system as basis for porting it to Ada? The
> Minix 3 is a modern micro kernel os and has about 4.000 Lines of code.
> It is full Posix compatible. Some guys have added real time
> functionality to it (see ACM.org for further reading). Thus it would a
> good place to start. As it has to few lines of code it should be
> possible to build a kernel in overseeable time.
> 
> Another thought to get this project taking some speed would be not to
> rewrite all the available C code but to develop a translator c2ada. It
> would us getting startet and the resulting code could be enhanced and
> improved.
> 
> Do you think this would make this project doable?
> 
> Regards
> 
> Cedric Lannock


Hi Cedric,

I have started to develop some kind of OS fully in Ada : Lovelace.

I have thought recently to restart all of it on a minix3 basis, but the
lack of Virtual Memory handling stopped me (as far as I understood
minix3) and also that minix has is proper compiler which isn't gcc. And
something I definitively don't want to do is to write an Ada compiler to
produce minix binary format. Perhaps adapt GNAT to minix is a reseanable
 project but it doesn't seem so to me.

If you want we can try to join our forces for building a fully Ada OS.

Cordially, xavier
PS:
My work is mainly a translation from C to Ada of the SOS work[1].
This isn't a strict translation and for example exception support is
enabled from the very beginning of the kernel boot (ease a lot the
kernel debugging).

Here is a monotone repository with the last lovelace code : [2].
For more information about accessing this monotone server : [3].

There is already some Ada OS available like MarteOS (not full Ada code
as far as I understand, list of Ada OS not exhaustive).

[1]http://sos.enix.org/en/MainPage
[2]http://www.ada-france.org:8081/branch/changes/org.os-lovelace
[3]http://www.ada-france.org/article131.html
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