Re: L4Env

[Farid Hajji]

> The main goal of the L4Env project is to provide abstractions for the
> basic system services to application programmers. This includes the
> management of tasks, threads, memory, I/O resources and
> synchronization. We are currently discussing about more things to be
> included into L4Env (like a minimal libc, nameservice, task startup
> code, application loader, ...), but didn't agree on that yet. 
> Our motivations for starting L4Env were
> - ease the application development on L4
> - reach more portability with respect to the different L4 API version
>   but (we hope) also with different hardware architectures 
This would be of great help to the Hurd/L4 porting effort. The more
Mach-like abstractions L4Env will provide, the easier will our port
will be.

Are you currently working on a pager with a mach-like vm_*() interface
which could be used instead of Mach's vm_*() calls in the Hurd or in,
say, Lites? I'm currently thinking of implementing such a pager by
modifiying the UVM sources of NetBSD [UVM is better than Mach- or
BSD-VM, because it proactively tries to collapse the vm_object chains
that tend to build up in Mach/BSD-VM]. This pager should be accessible
through IDL calls which will be wrapped in a user-level vm_*() library
similar to Mach's vm_*() syscalls.

> Closely related to L4Env is an IDL compiler for L4 IPC. We used Flick
> so far, but we are currently switching to our own IDL compiler, DICE.
Which bindings will DICE produce? I assume that they well be at least
C and/or C++ bindings. Will they be CORBA/OMG compliant (as specified
in the omg C and C++ specs)? Will the IDL language itself be CORBA/IDL
compliant? IIRC, DICE or some other compiler I recently saw, used
non-compliant IDL syntax. Hmmm...

> We already implemented some of the L4Env components, the
> documentations can be found on the L4 Developer's Bibliography web
> page. We hope to release a snapshot in the next 1 or 2 months. 
That would be great! Could you please cross-post the announcement
to l4-hackers and l4-hurd as well? Thanks!

> > I'm particularly interested in how it relates to using drivers from
> > Linux with L4. I've found a few Doxygen pages on the Dresden server, but
> > they look very minimal. Is there something more that could be perused?
> Our Linux device driver emulation framework uses the L4Env. Christian
Will L4Env be both L4Ka/Hazelnut and Fiasco compliant? Are you prepared
to support V2-API when it will be released?

> Helmuth wrote his Diploma thesis about the driver emulation framework
> (in german), a short position paper in english and slides of a
> presentation can be foud at
> http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/~reuther/helmuth.pdf
> http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/~reuther/helmuth_slides.pdf
Thanks for the hint. I'll grab the thesis as well, if it is available.

> Dipl.-Inf. Lars Reuther          Dresden University of Technology
> Department of Computer Science   Operating Systems Research Group
> Phone: +49 (351) 463-38401       Fax: +49 (351) 463-38284
> address@hidden     http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/~reuther/

-Farid.

-- 
Farid Hajji -- Unix Systems and Network Admin | Phone: +49-2131-67-555
Broicherdorfstr. 83, D-41564 Kaarst, Germany  | address@hidden
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