[squeak-dev] seL4 Microkernel: How small can the shim be?

ken.dickey at whidbey.com ken.dickey at whidbey.com
Sat Feb 27 00:46:14 UTC 2021


Liam wrote:

> I do not know much about the whole L4 family but what little I know
some of the existing OSes based upon them were very vaguely Unix-ish.
That's precisely what I'm trying to move away from.

• I do not know if SEL4 has working multiprocessor support. I know
that QNX does, which demonstrates that a Unix-like true microkernel
can do this; but I also believe that Minix 3 so far lacks one, and
lacks some APIs needed for POSIX and xNix compatibility. This is not
an easy thing to do.
..

Right.  I am thinking of expanding outward from Genode ( 
https://genode.org/about/index ), start with a small (non-Unix) OS which 
runs on (some of) x86/ARM64/RISC-V which can be used as a bootstrap for 
Smalltalk->Native runtime, then replace services written in C to 
services written in Smalltalk initially with the same API, but later 
re-imagined.  An ultra-secure OS which has the right basics for 
hotplug/live updates.  Add eMail & Web browsing after getting core St 
GUI up.

This is pretty much a scratch effort.  Some C at first, particularly in 
the microkernel (e.g. seL4) but this is minimal and kinda like changing 
FPGA gates.

We are probably "agreeing loudly" on most of this, particularly given my 
ignorance of Oberon.

Later,
-KenD


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