Name: Flávio Cruz
Email: flaviocruz at gmail dot com
Some Hurd stuff
And code: cl-hurd
hg clone http://freehg.org/u/flavioc/cl-hurd/
Summer session
Creating an extensible translator library in lisp using the mig generated stubs.
What's done
- The library for writing translators is mostly written.
- This library is intended to implement virtual filesystems. Examples are: translators were data is located in a local file (like zipfs, tarfs, rarfs, ...), single file translators (that do content filtering, output of a command, etc), network based filesystems (ftpfs, httpfs, ...)
- Right now, what's missing is: support for symlinks, file execution, and setting other translators on our node tree.
- It's possible to specialize the basic translator library and implement new translator classes. This is done using CLOS.
- There is a tree-translator class that makes the managing of a node tree very easy, doing all the work for us, through a simple directory API and implementing the directory callbacks for us.
- There is a simple example (something like zipfs) translator that can expose the directories and file contents of a ZIP file.
- Translator options (manipulated through fsysopts) have a simple and easy to use API.
- All the Mach port manipulation API is available.
- It's possible to send and receive messages. Simple example:
(let* ((spec-mixed (make-message-spec :fields '(:string :integer :char :string :integer :real)))
(msg-mixed (make-message :spec spec-mixed))
(port (port-allocate :right-receive)))
(send-message msg-mixed :remote port :data (list "abc" 42 #\b "cba" 314 3.14))
(receive-message msg-mixed :source port) ; This returns T on success.
(get-message msg-mixed))) ; Returns '("abc" 42 #\b "cba" 314 3.14)
- New message types (like :string, :integer) can be implemented, providing a powerful extension mechanism.
- Creation of symlinks and symlink path resolution.
- Creation of character/block devices, fifos and sockets.
What needs to be done
- Using continuations for IO blocking operations. This can be done using cl-cont.
- Callbacks:
- filelock, filelockstat (still not sure if they are really needed)
- filereparent
- Bind the client RPC calls.
- Use the socket stubs?
Notes
- File execution is complicated to do, because there is no multithreading support on CLisp and continuations won't do it. Maybe forking the clisp process?.
To do
Documentation
- Manually Bootstrapping a Translator
Translation
- Translate the Hurd website to Portuguese?
Completed tasks
Patches
- http://alioth.debian.org/tracker/index.php?group_id=30628&atid=410472
- libsvg patch accepted.
- Adapted glibc patch (http://www.schwinge.homeip.net/~thomas/tmp/glibc-patches/0009-2007-07-22-version-of-init-first.cvs.GCC_4.1.patch.patch)
- http://opensvn.csie.org/leic/hurd/patches/glibc-init-first.patch
- Patch to remove some GNUMach IPC warnings and minor cleanup:
- http://opensvn.csie.org/leic/hurd/patches/gnumach-ipc-warnings.patch
- Website patches that correct some encountered typos:
- http://opensvn.csie.org/leic/hurd/patches/hurd-talk-typo.patch
Documentation read
- GNU/Hurd User's Guide, an introduction to the important concepts and software of the GNU system, written for new users, AKA "GNUbies."
- Towards a New Strategy of OS Design, an architectural overview by Thomas Bushnell, BSG.
- The Hurd, a presentation by Marcus Brinkmann.
- The Hurd Hacking Guide.
- The GNU Mach Reference Manual
- The GNU Hurd Reference Manual
- The Unofficial GNU Mach IPC beginner's guide
- Mach IPC without MIG
- CFFI User's Manual
Before selection
- Uptime program in C and Lisp using CFFI.
- Hello translator.
Misc
Lisp implementations that run on Hurd
- Clisp
- ECL
- ?