Re: Contributing to the Hurd

[Tomasz Wegrzanowski <maniek@beer.com>]

On Wed, May 10, 2000 at 02:16:07AM +0200, Mark Kettenis wrote:
>    From: "Daniel E. Baumann" <baumannd@msoe.edu>
>    Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 12:20:25 -0500
>    Resent-From: debian-hurd@lists.debian.org
> 
>    The main reason I would like to know what needs to be done is that
>    I want to get the paper work in for this class filled out and on
>    the independent study form I have to write some shpeil about what
>    this study is about and what I am going to accomplish, etc.  So any
>    information about what needs to be done would be much
>    appreciated. I can then pick something to do. :)
> 
> Here are some things that I'd like too see in the Hurd:
> 
>  * A POSIX shared memory implementation.  Shouldn't be too difficult
>    using Mach's memory objects.
> 
>  * POSIX clocks & timers.  Involves added support for these things to
>    GNU Mach (looks like there's something in CMU's MK84 release).
> 
>  * The infamous shadowfs (nifty union mount done in a Hurdish way).

Am I very wrong
or readonly shadowfs
needs only to check, upon open request,
if file exist on first fs
  if not, if on the next one, etc,
and if yes forward everything to good fs
and if not return simple error ???

>  * Redesigning the console.  Having something really basic in the
>    kernel (perhaps only a framebuffer with some basic functionality
>    for printing kernel messages, i.e. simple ASCII strings) and
>    provide a server that implements the actual terminal device in user
>    space on top of that.

This shouldn't be very difficult using KGI/libGGI.
The main difficulty is that test cycle when porting drivers
usually contains a reboot

* Porting pppd. In *theory* only knowledge about pfinet internals is needed
  (to modify it), because pppd is quite portable itself.

* Providing way for exporting PCI config data, DMAs, IRQs and IO ports from
  GNU Mach to user level programs. Providing this, sound support would be semi-ready
  I even did some mini sound-making user level program (for SB-compat),
  but it only makes a lot of noise due to lack of sync due to lack of dma
  Better try to port ALSA