Subject: Current status of the Linuxss project
From: "Louis-D. Dubeau" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 May 1994 00:57:36 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce

Hi there,

I finally came out of deep coma and I'm now ready to resume work
on linuxss. Here is some info about the past, the present and the
future of the project.

Firstly, for folks that have been doing Linux/Mach work of their own, I'd
love to hear what you're up to and sync up so we can leverage each
others' work.

Secondly, for those who don't know, the goal of the linuxss project is
to 'port' Linux to Mach. Well, in fact it's a little bit different
than a usual port but it gives a good idea of what we're trying to
do. Linuxss came from "Linux Single Server" because the original idea
was to implement the functionnality of Linux into a single OS
server. However, while I was in deep coma I thought about it a lot and
came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be much harder to implement
the same thing using multiple servers in the first place. (So now, it
should be called linuxms or lxms, but I'll still call it linuxss or
lxss... the force of habit, I guess.)

I also decided to structure the development a bit and use a minimal set
of SE (Software Engineering) techniques. That means that I'll go through
4 phases: specification, design, development (coding), and
test. Those who know SE principles will notice that I'm skipping
some phases. Well, I just don't have time to apply ALL SE principles
and in particular, the testing phase will be kept short and sweet. The
rest of the testing will be done the usual way: play with it and find
the bugs! It has given very good results in the freeware world (even
commerical companies use that method!!!) so I don't see why I
shouldn't use it (especially since it will allow me to spend more time
on design/coding).

So the project schedule will look about like this:

- Spec phase:

  Go through all Linux syscalls and document them (the specs of the calls).
  Document the binary formats used by Linux.
  Document (or get documentation) about the Hurd interfaces (especially the fs
    servers).
  Document techniques used in implementing BSDSS and other already existing
    OS servers for Mach that are applicable to linuxss.

  NB: I will of course look for already existing docs, so if you have any
      pointers to good docs, please e-mail them to me.

- Global design phase:

  Decisions about the global implementation of Linuxss will be made during this
  phase.

for all modules {

- Local design phase:

   Here decisions about the local implementation of a module will be made.

- Coding phase:

   The module is coded in good ol' C.

- Testing phase:

   Does it crash?

}

- Hallucination phase:

   If all goes well during the other phases and I have enough time, I'll take
   some time to read the latest papers in OS engineering and implement
   additionnal features to Linuxss (and quite probably hallucinating in the
   process).

Of course, as soon as something is out on the net for linuxers to
play with, I'll begin processing bug reports. Also, the work on
different modules (servers in fact) will probably be done in parallel
since they are all dependent of one another.

Help is welcome. However, it may be one or two weeks before I can tell
exactly how the work can be divided. For example, I'll have to think
about some simple standards for the docs and such.

BTW, please, do not e-mail me questions about how to program in C, or
how Mach works or other generals questions not specific to linuxss. The
time I spend answering those questions is taken from the time I should
put to work on linuxss. (If someone wants to volunteer themself to
answer those questions and maybe also a FAQ: you're welcome.)

Also, I zapped my mailbox some time ago while experimenting with a
perl script, so some of the requests to linuxss-request have been
lost. Sorry! The linuxss mailing list is back on line.

That's all folks.

|              Louis-Dominique Dubeau <[email-masked]>
|Computer Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal (Montreal, Quebec)
|               ---    Linux single server project   ---
|  mailing list: [email-masked] -- requests: linuxss-request 
| alpha code at aiken.info.polymtl.ca in pub/linuxss (use it at your own risk)
|                     -> This sentence is false!!! <-
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