I know I have posted some comments on this mailing list that seem to
support POSIX being the default interface for the Hurd. In fact,
I know for a fact that I specifically said that once; however, upon
further reading and studying the current and future design of the Hurd,
I would like to recant that statement.
I still think POSIX should be well supported since so many apps (many
that I and other developers use) are badly needed in a new
system. However, the multiple environments that can co-exist
simultaneously on the Hurd brings me to the conclusion that we should
just create a better default environment (or library, if that's how it
will be implemented).
So I guess the next question in our design should be: What should we
make the new environment look like? Is it possible to start with
the POSIX design, find the flaws, and build a new design based on POSIX
but with all the flaws removed, or do we need to design something
completely new? It doesn't matter to me which one we do; for me,
a new design would be easier to follow. However, those that know
POSIX internals may have a different viewpoint, but I think a totally
new design could also be easier to build correctly from the beginning.
Please note that I have not seriously about these questions yet.
I'm still in the process of gathering more information from a broad
variety of microkernel OS papers to build my device driver framework
thesis proposal, and my DDF will use, to the best of my ability,
whatever environment is in place.
-- William M. Grim Master of Computer Science, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville Unix Network Administrator, SIUE, CS. Dept.