Re: Hurd questions

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 09:16:18PM +1300, Shams wrote:

> 1. What is the current development status of Hurd?

Not sure what you mean exactly. It's mostly working, but there are a
number of serious drawbacks:
- Some specific POSIX bits are still missing or implemented incorrectly,
  so not all software can be used
- Very bad hardware support. Many subsystems don't exist at all, like
  USB or sound
- There are stability and performance issues

> 2. What is the difference between Debian Hurd and just the "Hurd". -
> Are they maintained separate cvs branches, totally different code base
> etc? - Does this mean that Debian is releasing their own version of
> Hurd?

Debian uses CVS HEAD plus a number of more or less experimental patches,
that for one reason or the other didn't make it into the official
repository so far.

> 3. Is Mach the "final" microkernel for Hurd and is Hurd using Mach 4
> or Mach 1? - Has the microkernel been decided? - What about L4, is
> this a candidate?

Presently Hurd is using gnumach 1.3, which is a fork of Mach 4.

Mach is definitely not the "final" microkernel, though it's not quite
clear what will be. It's possible either to switch to some other
existing microkernel, to create a new one from scratch, or to introduce
significant changes to gnumach (effectively creating a new microkernel
as well).

However, nobody is actively working on switching to a different
microkernel right now. The port to L4 has been abandonned because of
technical problems with the current L4 Pistachio kernel; but some of the
upcoming new L4 variants might be more suitable, so L4 is still a
possible candidate.

Note that there is a parallel effort to create a new system (called
ngHurd or similar for now), which will definitely use a different
microkernel (probably Coyotos, but not decided yet); however, it will
have a very different design and properties, and thus can't be
considered a direct successor to the existing Hurd implementation.

> 4. What is the overall status of the entire project? - Is it going to
> be released soon?

Probably there won't be any official releases of Hurd on Mach any time
soon, because a) nobody seems interested in tackling a release, and b)
some people actually think it would be a bad idea.

However, there are more or less regular releases of Debian GNU/Hurd.

As for ngHurd, it's still in plannig state.

> - Is there much contribution from the community being made?

Depends on your definition of "much". There is a number of people
contributing, but most of them only occasionally due to time
constraints.

Also depends on what kind of contribution you mean. Some people work on
the core (microkernel, libc, system servers); some work on additional
translators; some work on porting and packaging existing software
(mostly for Debian); some work on the ngHurd drafts; some just do
testing and/or help out in other ways.

> 5. I would like to install and develop/for Mach and Hurd - Is there
> any documentation somewhere on how to set it up?

There are various (partially contradicting) documents available at
debian.org/ports/hurd , hurd.gnu.org , and hurd.gnufans.org .

-antrik-