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From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.unix.wizards,comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Free Software Foundation (was: Re: Mach, the new standard?)
Message-ID: <1613@botter.cs.vu.nl>
Date: Mon, 14-Sep-87 10:46:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: botter.1613
Posted: Mon Sep 14 10:46:26 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Sep-87 02:26:24 EDT
References: <1665@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <8381@utzoo.UUCP> <797@Pescadero.ARPA> <692@sugar.UUCP> <87@sdeggo.UUCP>
Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
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In article <87@sdeggo.UUCP> dave@sdeggo.UUCP (David L. Smith) writes:
>With some work, ... Minix could be changed to be BSD compatible.  The first
>task, though is to port it to a 68000 (with a good memory manager) or an
>80386 and get around the 64K task size limit.  The rest could be added in
>slowly.

As has been pointed out already, MINIX has already been ported to the 68000,
albeit without an MMU.  That (Atari) version is now in beta testing.  The
Atari version does not have a 64K limit.

Actually, I think that if anyone is going to do that much work, a much better
idea is to modify MINIX to make if conform to the POSIX standard, which is the
UNIX of the future.

Here is a suggestion/request in that direction.  Will someone who is familiar
with POSIX draw up a list of POSIX system calls, noting for each one whether
 1. it is identical to the corresponding MINIX call
 2. it is different from the corresponding MINIX call
 3. it is not present in MINIX at all

Similarly, for each program and library routine in POSIX, a similar list would
be useful.  That way people who want to get together and make MINIX more "real
world", could at least have a specific list of what needs to be done, and the
target would be something that will eventually be an International Standard,
rather than 4.3, which is not likely to survive once an International Standard
has been established for UNIX systems.

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)