Re: Guix and sel4

[radoslaw@chmielarz.xyz]

Hi,

It wasn't entirely what I was hoping for but thank You for answering. So 
to dig a little deeper how closely is guix connected to linux kernel? In 
other words what would have to be changed in order to work with a 
different kernel and therefore different syscalls? I don't mean the 
whole system but the minimal set. I would assume that a toolchain (make, 
binutils, gcc), obviously guile if there is anything specific to linux 
in it. Anything else?

Cheers,
Radek

W dniu 2018-01-15 00:26, Paul Boddie napisał(a):
> On Sunday 14. January 2018 22.16.39 radoslaw@chmielarz.xyz wrote:
>> 
>> In 2016 David Craven has sent an email about his attempt in using sel4
>> (genode with sel4 to be exact) with guix
>> (https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2016-12/msg00058.html). 
>> Do
>> You know if he succeeded or not? And if not where there any 
>> substantial
>> blockers or just lack of time?
> 
> He referenced some work done to use Nix with Genode, since abandoned, 
> but the
> Genode documentation provides more details about this:
> 
> "The design of Genode's package-management concept is largely 
> influenced by
> Git as well as the Nix package manager. In particular the latter opened 
> our
> eyes to discover the potential that lies beyond the package management
> employed in state-of-the art commodity systems. Even though we 
> considered
> adapting Nix for Genode and actually conducted intensive experiments in 
> this
> direction (thanks to Emery Hemingway who pushed forward this line of 
> work), we
> settled on a custom solution that leverages Genode's holistic view on 
> all
> levels of the operating system including the build system and tooling, 
> source
> structure, ABI design, framework API, system configuration, 
> inter-component
> interaction, and the components itself. Whereby Nix is designed for 
> being used
> on top of Linux, Genode's whole-systems view led us to simplifications 
> that
> eliminated the needs for Nix' powerful features like its custom 
> description
> language."
> 
> http://genode.org/documentation/developer-resources/package_management
> 
> (This is actually quite typical of Genode's online documentation, which 
> seems
> to have a "white paper" feel at times (and a "manifest" feel, just 
> summarising
> details, at others), so digesting it all can be time-consuming work.)
> 
> Personally, I have spent some time looking at L4Re rather than Genode, 
> mostly
> because I have been wanting to deploy Fiasco.OC and it would appear 
> that these
> two things (L4Re and Fiasco.OC) are developed more closely together. 
> Genode
> seems to bundle specific versions of Fiasco.OC, but I have been needing 
> to get
> updates and make fixes in a more convenient relationship with 
> Fiasco.OC's
> upstream.
> 
> There was a remark about the Hurd in the previous thread. The one 
> difference I
> tend to perceive between the Hurd and systems like L4Re and Genode is 
> that the
> latter things tend to be demonstrated almost like embedded solutions - 
> you
> build a specific payload and that is your system - whereas the Hurd 
> behaves
> like the open-ended system we are familiar with from our desktop 
> computers.
> 
> That said, Genode is supposed to be usable as a desktop operating 
> system, and
> will apparently introduce "a minimalistic generic live system that can 
> be
> interactively shaped into a desktop scenario by the user without any 
> reboot":
> 
> https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/17.11
> 
> Another difference, this time between Genode and L4Re, is the way the
> components seem to be wired up. Genode appears to use some kind of XML 
> syntax
> for this:
> 
> http://genode.org/documentation/developer-resources/init
> 
> Whereas L4Re employs Lua for the same job. I cannot comment on Genode, 
> but the
> L4Re framework seems to be something of a work in progress.
> 
> A vague goal of mine is to try and bring Fiasco.OC or something similar 
> within
> the realm of the Hurd again. There was once a project to port the Hurd 
> to a L4
> microkernel, but that stalled in various ways and also didn't involve 
> the more
> modern L4 variants that are around today and are supported by Genode.
> 
> Sorry if this was something of a digression from the topic!
> 
> Paul