Hi, On Wed, Sep 05, 2007 at 08:15:37PM +0200, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> Well, these documents are old, and this is what > http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/hurd/ng/ says in the first paragraphs: > > | There is an effort to create a completely new system design (for now > | called ngHurd, or Hurd-ng or HurdNG), which originated from the > | Hurd/L4 port. > > | The original Hurd/L4, which was meant to be mostly a direct port of > | the existing Hurd design to a new microkernel, has been abandoned by > | it's main developers, because some technical issues with the L4 > | Pistachio kernel turned out to be very fundamental. While > | reeveluating the design (and upcoming new L4 variants), the > | developers picked up some new ideas, and decided that now they > | rather want to work on a completely different design, which combines > | some of the original Hurd ideas with concepts from Jonathan > | Shapiro's high security EROS and Coyotos systems. Note that these paragraphs were written by me. They represent my view on the Coyotos-based ngHurd efforts; not the view of the active participants. But as you said yourself, this stuff is outdated anyways. > I guess some sorting out what HurdNG actually is needs to be done... Originally it referred to the Coyotos-based design, which would have been a totally different system from the existing Hurd, only remotely based on some Hurd ideas. I prefer reserving this term only for such a totally different design, and using Hurd/<whatever> to refer to any port of the existing Hurd to a new microkernel, changing mostly the low-level bits and introducing only minor refinements otherwise, but preserving the rest of the code, part of the existing architecture, and -- most importantly -- the spirit of the existing Hurd. However, pretty much anyone else seems to use ngHurd to refer to any new design Marcus happens to come up with, making the term pretty meaningless. I really don't know in which direction Marcus currently tends. But IMHO it doesn't really matter in regards to the ongoing work on the exiting Hurd. If Marcus comes up with something close to the current Implementation, most the existing stuff can be moved over. If he comes up with a totally different system: Well, it will be a totally different system -- not likely ever to replace the existing Hurd as GNU's official kernel. In either case, work on the current Hurd implementation won't be wasted. -antrik-
