Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!adm!xadmx!aglew@xenurus.gould.com
From: aglew@xenurus.gould.com
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?
Message-ID: <19813@adm.BRL.MIL>
Date: 31 May 89 11:40:40 GMT
Sender: news@adm.BRL.MIL
Lines: 34


I missed the original post (was away for a week).
Was somebody seriously asking for a wishlist?

If so, here's a limited list, items deliberately chosen to be simple,
obtainable, yet just beyond present day UNIX:

==> The kernel should have no knowledge whatsoever of file types,
    except for one, and only one, executable format.
    	IE. there should be none of that COFF/adb/SOFF stuff in
    exec().
    	There should be system calls to read text, code, from a file,
    change that code to be execute permitted and read-only, and then
    branch to that code, removing (otionally) the segment or stub that
    bootstrapped. With these primitives arbitrary executable file formats
    could be implemented, in user space.

==> "Real time" scheduling features:  fixed priority scheduling, etc.

    A scheduler that uses only strict priority as a means of deciding
    what process to run next; this is combined with a "priority migration 
    policy" to produce any type of scheduling you want.

==> Asynchronous I/O:
    	True asynch I/O operations as underlying primitives;  
    synch I/O implemented as  

    	    ioid = asynch_read(fd,buf,nbytes);
    	    asynch_iowait(ioid);

    rather than the abominable approach of implementing asynchronous
    I/O via IPC to a limited number of kernel processes that do synch I/O.

==> High res clock