Re: Hurd development

[Thomas Schwinge]

Hallo!

Meh, for forwarding (moderated) messages from one mailing list to another
by using the Mailman web interface, one apparently needs a Judo black
belt or something.

Now adding back Rick to the recipients' list.  <bug-hurd@gnu.org> or
<help-hurd@gnu.org> are suitable lists for such questions.


On Wed, 04 May 2011 15:28:46 -0400, hurd-devel-bounces@gnu.org wrote:
> I've been a lurker here for some time.  I've tried to keep up with the  
> status of this project, but to me it's confusing.

Do these summaries help to stay up-to-date?
<http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/index.html#index1h1>.

> Where are we on Hurd development?
> 
> No 64-bit kernel?

Correct.

> A working 32-bit kernel?

Correct.

> No VM extensions?

What exactly do you mean here?

> In theory, provided Linux apps use standard protocols for core function  
> calls, shouldn't all software work with hurd's kernel (if it's working  
> well)?

Correct, if we're talking about C library, POSIX, or similar programming
interfaces, and anything below it, and if the applications use these
interfaces exactly as described, and we implement them exactly as
described.  (As you can easily guess, there is a gray zone involved on
all sides.)

> Including drivers?

At a first approximation, an operating system's device drivers are
(typically) implemented in the kernel, thus above the layer quoted just
before, so they are specific to the kernel implementation.  GNU Mach does
have a few device drivers, but they're rather old -- yet they are rather
solid for basic stuff like IDE hard disks, or Ethernet network cards.
Work has been done (DDE project) to improve this: to move the device
drivers out of the kernel, and instead rely on Linux device drivers, but
run these as regular user-space tasks, but this is currently stalled due
to time constraints.

> Where are we on hurd development?

Does that help?  <http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/#index5h1>,
<http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/status.html>.


Grüße,
 Thomas

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