[FreeVMS] Question about FreeVMS qemu image

[BERTRAND Joël]

Roar Thronæs wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 04:26:04PM +0200, BERTRAND Joël wrote:
>> Renee wrote:
>>> I am in the process of moving. I am a former VMS developer. I wrote to ask
>>> what languages you are using. If it's C, VMS developers HATED C.
>>> I would like to help/join the effort but I would recommend Bliss.
>>
>> 	I think that we have to build a kernel (or a set of servers in L4
>> paradigm) that is portable. I'm not sure that bliss is good enough to
>> reach this goal. I'm not sure there is somewhere a open sourced bliss
>> compiler that is stable and usable. And I'm not sure that there are
>> bliss developers enough to start this project with bliss.
>
> First, I state that I do not know L4, so I can't judge it.
> (And don't have the time for it.)
>
> But how easy/difficult will it be to rewrite/extend to our purposes?

	L4/X2 has to be used without modification. 0.4 should be a 0.3 kernel 
split in several L4 servers. Main L4 interest is to run several kernel 
threads in different address spaces.

> How about CPU specific features given in VAX/AXP architecture reference
> manual, how is it possible to implement those?

	Yes, it is possible.

> (For my 0.3, I had modified the kernel's interrupt entry point a bit.)
> For instance, how will AST, IPL etc be handled with L4?
>
> How to fit in the QIO and VMS device driver system with L4?
>
> And the other hardware/system-specific issues?

	L4 does not know any driver. It only handle few syscalls (IPC, threads 
and very basic memory management). All drivers have to be written as L4 
servers.

	Regards,

	JKB