Re: [ros-dev] Porting ReactOS to the L4 micro-kernel

[Magnus Olsen]

Hi

XEN was working with a early version of XEN
the main problem is XEN change the interface in each
release of XEN. so new port of XEN is need it for each
version of XEN.

The port to PPC are not finish it have taken around one year
for one devloper doing it with help with other devs. it is
allot left todo before PPC port are finish. It is the frist
port to another CPU we are doing.

ReactOS are using same kernel desgin as windows nt (windwos 2003 server)
in the bottom. But the desgin comptable are not finish.

it is not so simple as u think the whole graphic subsystem are in win32k.sys
and printer, partly audio, printers, keyborad and more. ntoskrnl is the 
kernel
that you need as well it is not a easy thing to port. it is month of work 
doing that
same with the graphic subsystem

ReactOS goal is to use windows drivers and apps direcly out of the box.
if you ask if it posible within 6 month. doing port to L4. I say no. we talk
about year works todo it. everthing in ReactOS begin be very hard bound
to the win32k and ntoskrnl and they two are bound to dirvers and the
boot process of whole OS. you need revent the wheel again for all everthing 
again


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Henning Schild" <s2247401(a)inf.tu-dresden.de>
To: <ros-dev(a)reactos.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 1:08 PM
Subject: [ros-dev] Porting ReactOS to the L4 micro-kernel


>   Hi there,
>
>  i am thinking of porting ros to the L4 micro-kernel as topic for my
>  diploma thesis. The operating systems group in Dresden already ported
>  Linux to L4 (http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/L4/LinuxOnL4/) and proofed
>  that L4 offers all that is needed to run an operating system in
>  userspace on top of it.
>
>  The goal of the work would be to be able to run windows applications
>  next to miro-kernel applications. And to compare the performance with
>  that of pure ros, L4Linux/wine and windows. A comparison between the
>  port and L4Linux could also be part of the work. (mapping processes to
>  L4 tasks, memory management, interrupt-handling and so on)
>
>  I am not very experienced in C or assembler programming but am
>  motivated to learn. But before i start working on that topic i have
>  some questions on the portability of ros.
>
>  In svn and on the ros website i found that there is a ppc port of ros.
>  And on irc someone told me that there is ongoing work on a ros usermode
>  port. I also read about a xen port. But i did not yet find working
>  copies of the any of that ports. I built ros for i386 on my
>  machine and was able to boot it in vmware. I also tried building the
>  latest svn version with ROS_ARCH=powerpc but that did not succeed.
>
>  1. Did anyone ever finish a port to another arch?
>  2. How portable is ros in general? Meaning how much code would have to
>  be changed. I hope there are abstractions and only 10-15% of the kernel
>  would have to be changed.
>  3. Do you believe that one person new to ros can finish that kind of
>  work in 6 months? I know that might be hard to answer but how long did
>  any of you need to learn ros in detail?
>  4. If there are working ports,  how long did it take to implement them?
>  If there are not, what are the reasons they where never finished? I am
>  thinking of lots of assembler and i386 hacks.
>
>  5. Finally, what do think of the idea itself?
>
>  I hope you take the time to answer my questions. I am still on the way
>  to determine whether i really want to do that and whether i can do this
>  in 6 months.
>
>  regards,
>  Henning Schild
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