Roland McGrath > > > Ah, yes. Libmom. I've grepped the 0.2 source tree. Nothing uses it. > > I think this is definitely something which should be rectified, and I'd > > love to do it myself if I had the time right now. Maybe once I move to > > my new job... > > The beginnings of `libmom' in the Hurd sources are the result of an effort > by the University of Utah Flux Project to facilitate these very things you > are discussing, and conversations between the Hurd team and the Flux > project. Around that time (two years ago), I moved from the FSF to my new > job in the Flux Project, and that's *just* what I was thinking then... :-) > > We would very much like to work towards, not just for the Hurd, a > portability substrate between servers and microkernels. Of course, my > focus has gotten derailed into many other things in the past two years, and > developing the MOM interface and microkernel implementations of it has > languished. But it is still something my group is definitely interested in > pursuing and collaborating on with others in the community.
This is very welcome news. Everyone seems to agree this is a good idea. > > Actually, there are several distinct things which need doing. One is > > that existing servers should be altered to use LibMOM. Another is that > > LibMOM needs extending to meet the needs of the servers. And of course, > > LibMOM should be ported to other microkernels to give HURD the > > flexibility it deserves. > > The MOM interfaces are far from mature, and what you see in the Hurd > sources are some first thoughts more than an interface that's actually been > developed. The changes to the Hurd servers to use MOM object interfaces > will in fact be pretty simple, mostly cosmetic. > > The first and largest enabling thing the Hurd needs is a full pthreads > implementation and everything converted to use the 1003.1-1996 pthreads > interface instead of the Mach cthreads library interface. pthreads is the > interface other microkernels can be expected to provide; and implemented > cleanly in GNU on Mach, it can be largely portable code that needs a > relatively small amount of work for a new microkernel. I would argue this is not in fact the problem of the HURD, but of libc. Libc is the bit which has to provide a POSIX implementation, and Pthreads are POSIX.1c (formerly .4a). If I understand correctly, glibc2 has a linuxthreads addon which provides pthreads for the Linux kernel. There's no reason why this shouldn't be fully integrated into glibc properly and have libc provide a pthreads interface for any number of kernels and microkernels. -- Set Alias$Case Set Alias$[ |||| |MSet Alias$Otherwise Set Alias$[ \ Matthew "" |MSet Alias$When If %0=%%0 Then Set Alias$[ "" ||MIf %0=%%0 \ Wilcox Then Set Alias$Otherwise Set Alias$[ |||||||||||||||| ||MIf \ %0=%%0 Then Set Alias$When Set Alias$[ |||||||||||||||| -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
