Re: Helping with GNU Hurd development

[Samuel Thibault]

Pavel Kačer, le Mon 11 Apr 2011 23:00:11 +0200, a écrit :
> I am a tester and c and Java developer and I would like to see Hurd
> become usable GNU kernel. I saw a "help needed" add for the Hurd package
> and I would like to be somehow useful.
> Though I am not a kernel developer I am a skilful programmer and I think
> I might get into it quickly. My problem is I do not have much time now.
> But I will have more time later (two or three months perhaps). So maybe
> to start with something close to the add (see below) - not very time
> consuming - to get some idea about the stuff?
> 
> Here is the link of the help proposal:
> http://savannah.gnu.org/people/viewjob.php?group_id=30&job_id=462

Like Thomas, I don't think it's particularly small.

What can be small and immediately useful, however, is porting
console-setup to the Mach console, I've posted the following on
debian-hurd some time ago:

“If somebody has time to spend on a small and not-too-hard project,
it would be useful to add gnumach keymap support to console-setup.
It should be mostly a matter of translating the console-setup keyboard
format into the struct kbentry format (from gnumach's kd.h, see kd.c's
key_map array for the default value), opening the kd device (see
pc_kbd_start in hurd/console-client/pc-kbd.c for an example that opens
kbd, simply replace kbd with kd), and call device_set_status(dev,
KDSKBENT, &entry, 2) for each key map definition.

Note: use the kd.h and kd.c from the git repository, I've cleaned them a
bit.”

Samuel