Re: COM completeness

To: oskit-users@fast.cs.utah.edu, shap@eros-os.org
Subject: Re: COM completeness
From: Mike Hibler <mike>
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:03:27 -0700 (MST)
Sender: owner-oskit-users@fast.cs.utah.edu

> From: "Jonathan S. Shapiro" <shap@eros-os.org>
> To: <oskit-users@fast.cs.utah.edu>
> Subject: COM completeness
> Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 01:55:44 -0500
> 
> One of the things that intrigues me about the OsKit design is the =
> possibility that it might be a good starting point for a family of =
> universal drivers. I am inclined to suspect that if a universal kernel =
> driver model existed, it would become easier to persuade vendors to do =
> drivers for operating systems, and easier for research systems to have a =
> rich set of drivers.
> 
> In order for this to be possible, it is necessary to be able to =
> implement the NetBSD, Linux, etc. driver interfaces on TOP of the =
> corresponding OsKit interfaces (presumably with a suitable translation =
> layer). This exercise would be an interesting test of the "completeness" =
> of the COM-defined APIs. I am curious if anyone has tried this, even as =
> a "thought experiment."
> 

We have thought about this in the past.  In fact it was Shantanu Goel's
work of integrating Linux device drivers into Mach that served as the basis
of our driver interfaces.  We have talked about integrating OSKit components
in general into existing systems like Linux (and in fact did an experiment
with a LKM of our memfs into Linux).  Device drivers are obviously a major
reason for wanting to do this.

Of course, most of our actual work has been below the interface, wrapping
various OS driver interfaces (Linux, FreeBSD) to present the OSKit interface.
Along that line we have, in the past, thought about whether we could wrap
the Windows DDI (whatever it is called).

Finally note that there is the active Uniform Driver Interface inititive
(http://www.project-udi.org/) which seems to include a lot of the major
companys, Microsoft being the notable exception.