some thoughts

[D. Hazelton]

I've been thinking about a chat I had with Alex Ionescu about the 
"userspace driver framework" that MS has put in Windows Vista for a 
couple of days now. Mostly I was trying to think of how they could 
create a secure system where the drivers could live outside the 
kernel and still manage to do the job of providing clean access to 
the hardware.

I was doing this because I am just starting to take a look at the 
ReactOS code with an eye towards helping on the project. That being 
the case I decided to see if I could find a spot where I could fit my 
skills into the project. While I'm more geared towards fixing bugs or 
filling out places marked "TODO" the thought of userspace drivers - 
or rather, just the thought that such a system would allow for 
drivers that could die and not take the system with them - has caught 
my interest.

At the current time the only way I can see this being done is by using 
the HAL to abstract all hardware and providing an API that, via the 
HAL, will allow for _AUTHENTICATED_ programs (aka drivers) to 
register themselves with the kernel and provide access to said 
devices. The access itself would best be handled by the drivers 
registering an interface that programs can use to call directly into 
the driver.

This just leaves me with a simple problem to solve - should the 
interface be a COM/COM+ interface (or it's primitive, since I don't 
think anyone wants the lag having COM/COM+ in the kernel would cause) 
or should it be something simpler, like a UFS path ?


DRH

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