On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 3:57 PM, Marek Dopiera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Monday 17 of November 2008 14:34:23 Sergiu Ivanov napisał(a): > > Well, I wonder whether porting Hurd to NetBSD kernel would take less > > effort than it should have taken to port it to L4 or Coyotos. Still, > > both attempts failed, and I am strongly inclined to think that it is > > just infeasible (or near infeasible) to port the Hurd on a > > *monolithic* kernel, though you had better ask Hurd guys smarter than > > me. > I wouldn't call it porting, it is just an emulation layer, similar to > allowing > launching Linux binaries on NetBSD. This means that only GNUMach logic has > to > be emulated. Most syscalls already work, because there was an effort to > provide darwin emulation. Then, having the stable NetBSD code, all that is > left is to provide the Mach services on top of it. > > > > I don't know whether there are specific limitations which would not > > allow to so this on NetBSD kernel, but, obviously, such an operation > > would mean *a lot* of work and I'd doubt that devising a brand new > > microkernel will take much more :-) > > > Again, it is not porting and there is much less work to do because of it. > At > least I hope so ;). > Ah, I see :-) Still, it means that the Hurd will always remain a secondary thing on NetBSD, mainly due to the necessity of the emulation layer. My opinion is that such a thing may have interesting academical nuances involved, but, unfourtunately, it will hardly help the Hurd to make its way toward a real production system. BTW, after some pondering, I came to the conclusion that translators on NetBSD are not a very good sign for the Hurd community, because almost all PR actions Arne Babenhauserheide is undertaking are based on translators. If a similar technology is fully implemented on NetBSD, the Hurd will hardly have any other easily noted advantage compared to other OS. Especially taking into consideration the fact that NetBSD is easier to set up on a great variety of platforms. Regards, scolobb
