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From: jds@cs.umd.edu (James da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.os.mach
Subject: Re: Mach 3.0: what's missing?
Keywords: micro-kernel hackers kit
Message-ID: <31910@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 22 Mar 91 22:10:06 GMT
References: <3444@engadm3.csd.mot.com>
Sender: news@mimsy.umd.edu
Organization: University of Maryland, Department of Computer Science
Lines: 32

In article <3444@engadm3.csd.mot.com> lance@motcsd.csd.mot.com
(lance.norskog) writes:
>The Mach 3.0 release kit from CMU appears to have almost everything
>you need to cross-compile a micro-kernel from 386 UNIX, and
>test your own raw Mach programs.  Except: what's the Boot File
>System?  Is it the BSD 4.2 Fast File System format?  If so, can you
>just download 'mkfs' from the BSD freed sources, build a boot floppy
>disk from UNIX/386 using the 'proto' option, and then reboot Mach
>from that floppy?
>
>If not, what else is missing?  I don't mean UNIX.  I don't want UNIX,
>I just want to write raw Mach.

The /boot program (and the initial boot sector, too) are not supplied with
the FTPable distribution.  The Mach kernel expects to be loaded at 1 Meg,
with protected mode on, paging off.

Also, Mach is normally built at CMU with their own version of Make.  Their
compiler also understands the environment variables CPATH and LPATH as
search paths for include files and libraries, respectively.  The Makefiles
take advantage of these features, so you can't build Mach with a normal
make and cc.

As has been remarked here, Gnu Make has equivalent (but different syntax)
functionality, so the Mach sources could be converted to it.  Has anyone
done this successfully, and if so, are you willing to post your diffs?  It
would save a fair amount of duplicated busy work by others.

Jaime
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: domain: jds@cs.umd.edu				     James da Silva
: path:   uunet!mimsy!jds		    Systems Design & Analysis Group