Re: status of l4-hurd

[Niels Möller]

Farid Hajji <address@hidden> writes:

> > Glibc needs also be ported if I'm right.
> This is a tough one. It depends on the way we're going to follow. If we
> base everything on top of VK, then we'd need a POSIX emulation library
> that would probably be outside of glibc (for max. portability).

I'm not sure I believe in that idea. The POSIX implementation of the
Hurd depends on *both* the kernel and various Hurd servers. For
instance, take the implementation of open(). It sends an rpc to the
port associated with either the cwd or the root (depending on whether
the filename is relative or absolute). When translators are
encountered, it will send an rpc representing som subdir. In the end,
it gets back a port that supports read and write rpc. All the rpc:s
are Hurd-specific.

So if you implement open() on top of L4 or the VK, independent of the
Hurd, that implementation won't be terribly useful for the Hurd.

If there's a "VK", it would make sense to let glibc use the
message-passing functions/macros offered by the VK though, rather than
the micro-kernel's functions.

> This is just an idea right now. In the meantime, I'd suggest that we
> use OSKit's libc (and other components) while running under L4.

Can you explain what this libc is? My guess is that it's library
support for a subset ANSI-C, but no POSIX functions, no FILE *, etc?

Regards,
/Niels