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Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?)
From: |
Paul Boddie |
Subject: |
Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?) |
Date: |
Tue, 29 May 2018 17:41:47 +0200 |
User-agent: |
KMail/1.13.7 (Linux/3.2.0-6-486; KDE/4.8.4; i686; ; ) |
On Tuesday 29. May 2018 11.02.57 William ML Leslie wrote:
> On Tue, 29 May 2018, 4:24 pm Nala Ginrut, <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> > Speaking safe languages, are you proposing another language like Rust to
> > replace C? I think it's interesting to write another Hurdish kernel with
> > Rust, but I still don't know if it could be accepted as a side-project of
> > Hurd.
>
> Rust is one option. But remember that the Hurd is not a kernel, it is
> user-space implementation of functionality that has typically lived in the
> kernel.
This is especially important for us to remember when discussing Hurd-on-L4 as
opposed to a more general Hurd-NG, as I understand the terminology, with the
latter potentially bringing up new kernel designs and implementations.
Personally, I'm more interested in the former because it confines the activity
to something I can actually contemplate pursuing. It is also why I asked about
opinions of more modern L4 implementations than Pistachio and their potential
suitability.
> For the sake of both security and ease of development, critical parts could
> be written in rust (or ATS, or Nim), and less critical parts in guile or so.
Just to get things written and to fit in with existing systems, I've been
writing C and C++ - mostly the latter - to get familiar with L4Re. I guess
that the language story is pretty similar with Genode. I don't particularly
like writing C++, but I also don't feel that I should be getting language
implementations and bindings working on a fairly unfamiliar system before
doing anything else.
However, there are papers about other languages being used - I recall a thesis
about Go on L4Re - and some version of Python appears to be available for
L4Re, although I haven't investigated it yet. L4Re employs Lua for init
program scripting, and I think Genode employs Nim for this purpose.
> > Anyway, it's using name mangling like C++ which is bad for FFI (foreign
> > function interface) to bind dynamic languages. I ever thought to write a
> > thing like cl-Hurd with Guile.
>
> We learned a lot from Arne's python bindings. Add language binding to the
> list of priorities that should be higher.
The L4Re developers expose a lot of the APIs to C programs, with perhaps only
some things being C++-only, and even then I imagine that the reason for any
limitations is a lack of time for them to go through and provide complete
coverage. Of course, C++ binding technology for languages like Python has
existed for many years, thinking of tools like SIP which still manages to do
that job reliably and dependably.
Paul
P.S. I certainly agree that broad language support is desirable. One Free
Software project I can immediately think of deliberately disfavoured languages
other than C++, instead of supporting language binding developers properly,
only then to "pivot" and support JavaScript as the new cool thing. That pretty
much told a bunch of existing and potential developers to go and look
elsewhere for no good reason and discarded momentum that arguably hasn't ever
been regained.
- Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), Paul Boddie, 2018/05/23
- Message not available
- Message not available
- Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), Rick Hodgin, 2018/05/23
- Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), arnuld, 2018/05/24
- Message not available
- Re: Aw: Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), Nala Ginrut, 2018/05/24
- Re: Aw: Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), William ML Leslie, 2018/05/24
- Aw: Re: Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), Arne Babenhauserheide, 2018/05/25
- Re: Re: Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), William ML Leslie, 2018/05/25
- Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), Nala Ginrut, 2018/05/29
- Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), William ML Leslie, 2018/05/29
- Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?),
Paul Boddie <=
- Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), arnuld, 2018/05/30
- Re: Aw: Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), Paul Boddie, 2018/05/24
- Message not available
- Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), Rick C. Hodgin, 2018/05/24
Re: Reviewing Hurd-on-L4 (and considering its future?), Richard Braun, 2018/05/24