[FreeVMS] Status Update ...?

[anthony c]

> I know; I only think that, in a first time, we have to write a stable kernel on only _one_ arch. In a second time, we can add some archs.

That's the plan: a portable kernel (i.e. portable C, easy assembly migration), written for x86 first then ported to whatever other architecture we want/need later in the process. 

> If this is only a 64-bit interface, will it still be possible to write something like VEST that would translate Vax and Alpha binaries into x86 binaries?

Never heard of it, but to tailor a precompiled VAX/Alpha VMS binary for our kernel on x86 would require a lot more than that: think virtual memory and instruction translation (JIT?) - I was under the impression that the existing code could load and execute a precompiled VMS binary, but I planned on doing this for our kernel anyways after we get it running. Just don't expect a whole lot for the case of hardware drivers, referring to an earlier discussion, but TCP/IP, filesystem and other QIO/RMS-dependent code will hopefully be compatible. 

> I haven't said that FreeVMS has to be only a 64 bits OS. I have written that _in a first time_, we have to write a runable and stable system on only one arch.

Hopefully we can all agree on x86? I don't exactly have a SPARC machine laying around...

Graham's resources will be quite interesting to read and design according to - I will take note of them this weekend during my next long coding session for this project. 

> Any special tool you will use for documentation? (Like doxygen, kernel-doc)?

...ASCII? 

In all seriousness, I have written my documentation in plain text in my IDE (Geany) as well as in-code comments clarifying functions and kernel interfaces. I don't like formats like PDF or DocBook (SGML) because they aren't all that portable and, frankly, a pain in the ass to read when running console-only or without a proper interpreter. 

Since we have a wiki, I vote for plaintext documentation with the easy conversion to wiki-markup later by human hands as we make the documentation public outside of the source code. If anyone has any other ideas, let them be heard, but I'm just shooting for simplicity and portability but I want to get the code properly documented without detracting too much from the actual coding, and the in-IDE ASCII editing allows me to do that while acheiving full portability.

But I'm not saying I'm closed to other options, as long as they are simple to use and in a portable format. 

-AC



      
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