Wolfang, > > GNU/Hurd is a different OS than GNU/Linux and Hurd is the kernel of the > > GNU/Hurd OS. > No, Hurd is a replacement for the Unix kernel, but it is not a kernel. > The kernel of the GNU/Hurd operating system is currently GNUmach, and > maybe it will be OSKit Mach somewhen. And in 20 or 30 years or so, it > may be L4 (... or L5 :-)). please don't be so pessimistic about the required time to port the Hurd to L4. The recent discussions on the l4-hurd mailing list were very promising indeed. The current state of the planned port is:
1. The L4 developers will deal with the problem of limited number of threads/task in future L4 ukernels, so that we won't have to worry about writing a multiplexing N:M thread library. We'll probably need some Pthreads-wrapper around the new L4 threads, but that won't be a real problem at all. 2. We'll most likely have to use an IDL compiler to generate stubs for IPC, just like we do right now with MIG/Mach. This compiler would simply generate Mach stubs for GNUMach/OSKit-Mach, L4-Stubs for L4 and, say, Unix-Stubs for Unix. The most promising IDL compiler right now seems to be Utah's flick (currently 2.1) compiler kit that has been extended to support L4(-Ka) IPC as well. Other IDL-compilers are also possible and available. We shall try all of them; we should just stick to formalized IDL as far as possible. 3. The first step towards porting the Hurd to L4 would be to gradually replace the MIG *.defs with IDL files that would be processed by, say, flick. I'll post a suggested list of further steps on l4-hurd, once I've finished trying the available IDL compilers/compiler-kits. If you have some experience with IDL and distributed objects (no, I don't want to turn the Hurd to CORBA, just to use IDL as an IPC generator), please contact me directly or via l4-hurd. The more expertise we get, the faster the port of the Hurd to L4 (and other subtrates) would be possible. Regards, -Farid. -- Farid Hajji -- Unix Systems and Network Admin | Phone: +49-2131-67-555 Broicherdorfstr. 83, D-41564 Kaarst, Germany | [EMAIL PROTECTED] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - One OS To Rule Them All And In The Darkness Bind Them... --Bill Gates.
