On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 10:19 AM, Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au>
wrote:
Seeing Minix 3 on x86 and ARM is good. Unless it
wants to wither when
the world moves beyond x86 and ARM, it will need to be done with enough
portability in mind to make porting it easy, yes, but it is hardly a
failing that it isn't ported yet.
Arguably, _only_ porting can fully reveal design issues that might impede
porting. But if as Liam says their goals are met fully on x86 and ARM then
I won't argue :)
The C compiler used by Minix 3 is Clang and at the moment Clang only
supports x86 and ARM. Clang was used for licensing reasons rather than
GCC. Other than the compiler issues the code to support a particular
processor is pretty small. Switch compilers to one that supports your
processor, write the few modules needed to support the particular features
(memory management, I/O protection features) and you are done. Of course
if your particular architecture doesn't have some necessary feature it
would leave a security hole that cannot be worked around other than trust.
When the world moves on from x86 and ARM I am sure Clang will get a backend
for it and if still around Minix 3 will get ported.
--
Doug Ingraham
PDP-8 SN 1175