Re: Hurd on Minix3 or other kernels?

[Mike Small]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 04:43:21PM -0500, B. Douglas Hilton wrote:
> Hi all. I'm a long-time lurker here and used to do a bit of high-level 
> porting and tinkering on the old Gnumach/Hurd. I tried to help debug the 
> OSkit/Mach kernel, mostly without much success, as unfortunately I'm not 
> really very knowledgeable about kernel level programming.
...
> Is there any merit to my idea of trying to fork a branch of Hurd over to 
> something like Minix3 just for mainly academic purposes? I realize that 
> it wouldn't be cutting edge or anything, but I'm lucky I can still even 
> boot Gnumach/Hurd on my new(ish) system, most people won't be able to 
> even do that soon. I think a lot of interested student types could 
> potentially benefit if it were possible. I know that MIG is deeply 
> intertwined with the Hurd userland and I really don't have a clue as to 
> what would be involved in creating a MIG-like tool for the Minix3 
> microkernel, but I assume it would not be easy.
...

I'm not qualified to judge the merits of this (although doesn't minix
lack paging?) but it sounds like fun.  Please let me know or make it
known on one of the Hurd lists if you take up this project and need
testers or other beginning programmers.  I've been intending to try to
port Hurd/GNU Mach to my powermac (or Hurd/L4, but that seemed
unlikely to be within my capabilities - excuse the pun - anytime soon)
for some time, but agree with you that minix might be a better
starting point for a novice.

-- 
Mike Small
address@hidden