Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[Russ Cox]

> What about a VM for the simplest machine possible that can run Plan9?
> Add a C compiler for the architecture and then everyhting just runs.

crawls, perhaps.

Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[Skip Tavakkolian]

>>>it not be relatively easy (or at least, easier than it was) to rewrite
>>>drawterm in limbo?
>
> i'd have thought it would be close to a shell script,
> given some commands that roger has done to interact
> with rio, that might (or might not) even be in the current distribution.
>
> much of drawterm is similar to a large subset of emu
> (and supporting libraries).

What about a VM for the simplest machine possible that can run Plan9?
Add a C compiler for the architecture and then everyhting just runs.

Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[paurea]

Skip Tavakkolian writes:
 > What about a VM for the simplest machine possible that can run Plan9?
 > Add a C compiler for the architecture and then everyhting just runs.

Vmware does that job for the moment :-).
--
                 Saludos,
                         Gorka

"Curiosity sKilled the cat"

Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[Charles Forsyth]

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might as well use/do an emulator for an existing architecture that's
reasonably straightforward, such as MIPS (perhaps with simpler
`kernel mode' interfaces).   unfortunately, you'd still need to do
virtual devices and those would need to turn round and invoke
the underlying systems's primitives, to access graphics and files for instance,
so it's not clear that it simplifies things much.

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From: "Skip Tavakkolian" <fst@centurytel.net>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 22:16:58 -0800
Message-ID: <56a2faa27b020228835e32308bc0acb2@centurytel.net>

>>>it not be relatively easy (or at least, easier than it was) to rewrite
>>>drawterm in limbo?
>
> i'd have thought it would be close to a shell script,
> given some commands that roger has done to interact
> with rio, that might (or might not) even be in the current distribution.
>
> much of drawterm is similar to a large subset of emu
> (and supporting libraries).

What about a VM for the simplest machine possible that can run Plan9?
Add a C compiler for the architecture and then everyhting just runs.

Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[Skip Tavakkolian]

>> What about a VM for the simplest machine possible that can run Plan9?
>  > Add a C compiler for the architecture and then everyhting just runs.
>
> Vmware does that job for the moment :-).

It doesn't need everything in VMware. Something simpler.

Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[Skip Tavakkolian]

> crawls, perhaps.

ha! ☺

Yes, but then the requirement to run on faster and faster machines
puts in good standing with Intel.

Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[Skip Tavakkolian]

What if the VM presented some things at a higher level, not devices
but filesystems.  Leaving authentication aside, on the kernel side,
they would look like foreign filesystem imported at boot.  With well
defined interfaces one could add new filesystems to the VM by
adding a dll; not much different than what is done in drawterm
anyway.

Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[phillip stanley-marbell]

I recently (yesterday) got most of the inferno/utils to compile
for a device (a second VM for inferno, models Hitachi SH3)
that i did a few years ago. The obvious neat thing is that these
C programs can do things like draw on the screen via /dev/draw.

This means I now have [01258k][acl] which run over inferno.
I currently build the device into the Windows, MacOS and Linux
emu binaries. Integration into a native kernel is next (I had some
issues when i originally tried a few years ago, and lost interest).
It will be nice to have a native inferno that can build itself.

There are still a few rough edges i need to clear up, and I'm obviously
doing this for reasons best understood by myself. The speed is not
that great (currently about 10 MIPS on a P4 1GHz), but there are
ways to get almost an order of magnitude speed improvement.

I have a few other unix programs already running on it:
	bzip2, gzip, mpeg2enc, gcc (actually, just cc1).

The source for the device has been on my web page for a while,
I just recently upgraded it to fit into inferno4e.

cheers,
pip


On Dec 20, 2003, at 7:40 AM, Charles Forsyth wrote:
> might as well use/do an emulator for an existing architecture that's
> reasonably straightforward, such as MIPS (perhaps with simpler
> `kernel mode' interfaces).   unfortunately, you'd still need to do
> virtual devices and those would need to turn round and invoke
> the underlying systems's primitives, to access graphics and files for
> instance,
> so it's not clear that it simplifies things much.
>
> From: "Skip Tavakkolian" <fst@centurytel.net>
> Date: December 20, 2003 1:16:58 AM EST
> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
> Subject: Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy
> Reply-To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
>
>
>>>> it not be relatively easy (or at least, easier than it was) to
>>>> rewrite
>>>> drawterm in limbo?
>>
>> i'd have thought it would be close to a shell script,
>> given some commands that roger has done to interact
>> with rio, that might (or might not) even be in the current
>> distribution.
>>
>> much of drawterm is similar to a large subset of emu
>> (and supporting libraries).
>
> What about a VM for the simplest machine possible that can run Plan9?
> Add a C compiler for the architecture and then everyhting just runs.
>

Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[boyd, rounin]

> It doesn't need everything in VMware. Something simpler.

    Boris the Blade:  Heavy is good, heavy is reliable.  If it does not work
    you can always hit him with it.

,x/[Hh]eavy/c/simple/
,x/hit him with/c/debug/

Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[boyd, rounin]

> Given the recent changes to Inferno (fileserving, graphics, etc), would
> it not be relatively easy (or at least, easier than it was) to rewrite
> drawterm in limbo?
>
> The advantages are obvious - a single drawterm binary would work
> identically on all the platforms supported by Inferno!

sounds like a plan and you could bugfix it without, say, a µ$loth SDK.

Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[Martin C.Atkins]

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 08:18:00 0000 Charles Forsyth <forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> i'd have thought it would be close to a shell script,

That would reduce the complexity somewhat - assuming it isn't a
*really* horrendous shell script :-)

> given some commands that roger has done to interact
> with rio, that might (or might not) even be in the current distribution.

Yes, I was remembering Roger's Charon-in-a-window work, and hoping
that it implied good things about the possibility of reversing the roles,
which is, I think, mostly what drawterm would involve.

> much of drawterm is similar to a large subset of emu
> (and supporting libraries).

I wish all my shower-time ideas turned out so good!

Martin
--
Martin C. Atkins			martin@parvat.com
Parvat Infotech Private Limited		http://www.parvat.com{/,/martin}

Re: Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[Charles Forsyth]

>>it not be relatively easy (or at least, easier than it was) to rewrite
>>drawterm in limbo?

i'd have thought it would be close to a shell script,
given some commands that roger has done to interact
with rio, that might (or might not) even be in the current distribution.

much of drawterm is similar to a large subset of emu
(and supporting libraries).

Drawterm and Inferno? Was: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[Martin C.Atkins]

On Wed, 17 Dec 2003 23:57:56 -0800 "Skip Tavakkolian" <fst@centurytel.net> wrote:
> Isn't this an argument for stronger drawterm effort (or something
> more ambitious)?

This is probably a silly thought, since I haven't researched it, but...

Given the recent changes to Inferno (fileserving, graphics, etc), would
it not be relatively easy (or at least, easier than it was) to rewrite
drawterm in limbo?

The advantages are obvious - a single drawterm binary would work
identically on all the platforms supported by Inferno!

Martin
--
Martin C. Atkins			martin@parvat.com
Parvat Infotech Private Limited		http://www.parvat.com{/,/martin}