Le 20 mai 06 à 18:33, Nicolas Roard a écrit :
On 5/19/06, Günther Noack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Please don't call Etoile a 'virtual microkernel'. Etoile neither has
a kernel, nor does it provide any functionality that makes it an
operating system. It doesn't do scheduling, it doesn't handle virtual
memory support etc etc. The only thing that *may* in the future be
implemented in Etoile and that in fact is a part of an operating
system, too, is a virtual filesystem. GNOME and KDE both provide you
with these things, and they can hardly be called an operating
system. ;-) Don't set your aims too high!
Well, additionally to the virtual filesystem, there's the whole
notification/name service thing too... But anyway, that's why Quentin
choose "virtual microkernel" and not microkernel :-)
Virtual because indeed it is not an operating system dealing with
memory allocation and scheduling; but it provides the same kind of
services you'd expect from a microkernel.
Yes, but well it's true 'virtual microkernel' concept is quite
blurry/buzzy, better to see it as a word game to illustrate the point
since Étoilé has nothing to do with a kernel or an operating system.
The idea behind its use was to emphasize it borrows one of the two
key particularities which differentiates a microkernel from a
monolithic kernel :
- servers in user space in order to keep the number of elements in
kernel space very low
- simplify and unify as much as possible interaction between elements
by reusing a set of few abstractions. This usually achieved by
introducing messaging, then name service which is fairly often
combined with VFS
But well you could argue the last one is the old Unix ideal, Plan 9
vision etc., I won't object ;-)
I never heard of Io. Why don't we use Steptalk for scripting? It
looks very promising to me.
Also agree; Quentin love Io, and io is indeed a very cool language :D
but we don't have a working bridge, etc (although probably not too
difficult to do),
There is a very good io/objc bridge in Io repository itself, it was
ported in the past to GNUstep but right now it is broken. I have a
new experimental port (not yet committed). It is based on a snapshot
of Io core and Io/Objective-C bridge. Until now I only fixed the
compilation, it's still untested. Got to work on it.
Here is a link to Io website: <http://www.iolanguage.com>
while we have Steptalk. At least for the Scripting
part, Steptalk looks to me a better choice, it already provides a
proper architecture.
But the Io choice doesn't contradict with the use of StepTalk since
StepTalk is by design languages agnostic. The fact StepTalk provides
out of the box a Smalltalk implementation named StepTalk too
contributes to the unclarity of StepTalk related discussion. But
StepTalk Smalltalk is a just an option. You can perfectly build and
use StepTalk core without it.
Now the point of Quentin is that Io could be used as a main language
to develop application -- not just as a scripting language.
Yes, not right now probably.
Personally I think it's a bit remote, but well, if we have a
bridge, why not.
I sure would love developing applications mainly in Smalltalk or Io
and only coding few objects in Objective-C / C for performance
reasons..
So I would… my only objection, very personal, lies in fact I find
Objective-C syntax more pleasant to read than Smalltalk or Io ones.
Especially when you have to deal with lot of code.
Why do you want to override those? What do you want to improve?
Agree here... we need some justification (although I can see some of
them, it would be much better to write it down. Possibly in a specific
document).
It's a first version, that's why some holes remain here and there.
I will write more about this later or in another mail. Anyway don't
worry, nothing is set in stone right now.
I am quite happy that you specified the Etoile startup. It would be
cool if you could put it into an extra file, since this looks quite
implementable to me and I don't expect it to change a lot.
yes, good point.
Take notice of this.
I also don't get what the TalkCenter shell is supposed to do. Are
there Wiki pages about it? It would be cool if you could refer to
them in your text. :-)
To me TalkCenter is a bit like Steptalk shell... Am I wrong here,
quentin ?
Exactly :-) It should be based on Steptalk shell in fact. Once
interfaced with CoreObject, this shell will be able to do most of the
things a classic shell interface permits. We would just need to add
some elementary tools like move, link, copy etc. and perhaps a basic
text editor. The main point would be the possibility to interact with
objects of both applications and system and with a very good
scripting language (really integrated with the environment). Finally
instead of untyped stream (we use with pipes), we would rely on typed
stream/object, this would enable polymorphic interaction with
elements/objects too.
There is a fairly rough wiki page about it: <http://www.etoile-
project.org/etoile/mediawiki/index.php?title=TalkCenter>
Otherwise, I'm going to complete this document with links to the
various stuff I refer to.
In the long term, it would be cool to have a LaTeX version of this,
since it's quite long. :-)
In fact, this document is encoded in <http://docutils.sourceforge.net/
rst.html> :-)
I just need to process it to have a more readable version.
Thanks for the feedback,
Quentin.
--
Quentin Mathé
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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