[SqNOS] NOS: Small test results #1 + my vague windy ideas

[Evgeniy Philippov]

02.11.2012 21:12, Guido Chari пишет:
> Hi,
>
> The linux experiment sounds very interesting. We have talked lot of 
> times about doing something like that for NOS. More than a compiler we 
> have thought something like an emulator. Its very interesting, but is 
> a complex and big project.

(1) Well... I guess that emulating the linux userspace APIs is one of 
the necessary things to acquire, to be able to run Firefox, Adobe Flash, 
linux user programs... It is somewhat easier than emulating the entire 
linux (with hardware drivers)...

(2) Non-emulating approach could be (A) to rewrite Linux in Smalltalk or 
(B) to semi-automatically metaprogrammatically convert Linux into 
Smalltalk. I think this approach (2) is more feasible than emulating 
approach (1) and will think more on (2).

(2.1) It would help to write a semi-automatic metaprogrammatic converter 
environment for (2B). To do (2.1), a gcc + g++ backend generating a 
{Smalltalk+asm} code seems to be necessary. So gcc + g++ should be 
modified for this. This is highly complex task as gcc is highly complex, 
but (I think is) much more feasible than the emulator (1).

***

Meanwhile, I will try to study gcc's source code. This might require 
years of study of gcc's sources.

WBR,
Eugene

> For the tests not green well...last versions are old and, as you can 
> see from last mails, we are trying to find time to adapt NOS to the 
> new VMs (Cog, Stack). That first step would help a lot.
>
> Last versions also hasn't Network support, that's why on test you have 
> that and monticello shows errors. There are some old packages for 
> doing some network stuff, we should look if we can make them work again.
>
> Cheers,
> Guido.