Various things

>I have also assembled a much-requested "standalone boot" kit so you can
>boot up a basic VSTa configuration without having to rebuild the world

I guess this still uses DOS to boot? I've done a little work on a VSTa
boot floppy. I think I've figured out how to build the boot image (ie.
how to lay it out, and how to pass parameters, the basic boot cycle,
etc.) This is all pretty simple, we just emulate what boot.exe does.

>Finally, I've started work on debugger support. The kernel will provide
>peek/poke, breakpoints, read/write registers, plus optionally the ability
>to cause the program to breakpoint on each syscall and each signal. The
>interface will work for multi-threaded programs, which adds a certain amount
>of challenge to the coding task. I'm going to bring it up with an adb-like
>program, and port gdb once it's working.

Having a debugger will be a big help. One idea I liked a lot in plan9
was the /proc file system. For those who don't know what it is, it's a
filesystem containing stuff related to the processes. Use /proc, you
can read process memory, set breakpoints, etc. etc. From what I've
seen, in plan 9, when a process breaks, it hangs around, rather than
dumping core. The debugger then attaches itself to /proc to see what's
up. I think /proc would be useful. Once the debuggin hooks are in,
it'd be a good project for someone.

nick
Received on Mon Nov 29 08:11:16 1993