Re: port to minix3

[Thomas Schwinge <thomas@codesourcery.com>]

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Hi!

On Fri, 14 Dec 2012 15:52:21 +0100, Andreas Grapentin <andreas@grapentin.org> wrote:
> I need a port of glibc to Minix 3.2 and decided to do it myself.

It's been a few years that I have read a bit about Minix 3, and have
again forgotten a lot of details.  Remind me, how does userspace code
(including any libc) access "kernel services" (such as opening a file to
get a file descriptor, for example)?  Is it a standard Unix system call
interface (one syscall for open, one for read, one for close, and so on),
or is it based on a remote procedure call (RPC) interface, so there
essentially is a send message call that the kernel then dispatches to the
appropriate entitiy?  If the former, you can reference the existing Linux
kernel ports as well as some remaining bits of *BSD and other Unix kernel
ports; if the latter, your port will probably (have to) bear some
resemblance with the GNU Hurd port, which likewise is present in the
current source tree (apart from bug fixed and additional functionality
waiting to be merged).  I once began documenting some specifics of the
Hurd port, start at <http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/glibc.html>, and
also sections 2.1 and 2.5 of »A Critique of the GNU Hurd Multi-server
Operating System«, <http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/critique.html>,
give some architectural overview.


> I'll be following this guide:
> http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Porting.html
> 
> and I'll let you know if there is any progress at all :)

Be aware that doing a glibc port, especially if not a "straight-forward"
Unix syscall interface port, is not a trivial thing to do, so be prepared
to spend considerable effort there.


Grüße,
 Thomas

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