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A comment on Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust. Parent comment

Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by johannes1234321 on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @12:58PM (#18443082)
The issue with such an OS is that there aren't won't be any libraries and tools. So the OS vendor might need a custom shell, custom utilities, custom libraries for everything ... or they offer POSIX-like APIs. One area where one can see this is IncludeOS - they had their custom APIs for a long time to leverage their architecture, but are now focussed on providing POSIX compatibility ... and that's only for single purpose unikernel systems. If the OS should also be universal this is even more of a problem. (Especially if you also want a graphical desktop ...)
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @01:09PM (#18443182)
With that attitude you'll never be able to ditch legacy cruft, and there's quite a lot of it in POSIX. I agree with the other poster that a compatibility layer in the form of virtualization and/or emulation should be sufficient, as long as your new OS brings something to the table that's desirable. Shunt the legacy crap off into its own contained environment and build a nice new clean one for new stuff to use.
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by nixpulvis on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @01:12PM (#18443209)
I still think there are a plenty of reasons to support POSIX in many places. As someone who's been running fish for a while, I can appreciate the common ground it provides across the current UNIX ecosystem, but it's not like translating a bash script to fish is impossible.

There should always be a supported standard, but there should be nothing forcing you too it. This is the freedom we need to demand of our OSes.

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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by johannes1234321 on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @01:22PM (#18443315)
Yeas, in a imaginary world replacing POSIX would be great. But that's not an easy endeavor. 30 years of legacy tied to it.

As long as you don't have POSIX only special interest users will use your system.

I believe the only way forward is to start on POSIX and then move on step by step and deprecating part by part.

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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @02:00PM (#18443730)
In the same imaginary world, creating a new POSIX OS that isn't Linux is a giant waste of time just from gap in drivers alone. If you're going to ditch all that hardware support then you may as well ditch POSIX and its crap while you're at it.
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by pjmlp on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @03:36AM (#18448439)
Which is a reason why despite disliking what Google did to Sun and how hard they make to use the NDK, in the end I appreciate their Android design.

No POSIX for userspace as official API, rather ISO C and C++ APIs plus Android native APIs.

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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by yjftsjthsd-h on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @06:24PM (#18445858)
Unless you have some portable standard to target, you just tied the entire universe to exactly 1 OS implementation. I would like to not do that.
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @10:46PM (#18447302)
Bull. People developed software for multiple completely different computer architectures throughout the 80s and 90s. People do it today between different game console platforms in addition to operating systems. Even if you try and target something like SDL or a web browser your abstraction won't save you from a platform's quirks once you reach a certain level of complexity and then you'll have to work around it anyway.

Hell, even between supposedly POSIX systems there's a lot of #ifdef going on to make things work.

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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by ansible on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @02:13PM (#18443872)
My issues with POSIX stem from the fact that writing completely correct code which handles signals, interruptable operating system calls, and threads is hard. There are plenty of little details that are easy to get wrong. And you won't know you've gotten something wrong until much later when some confluence of events occurs.

I don't know if deprecating parts of POSIX is going to work any better than deprecating parts of C++. If all the bad stuff is still there waiting to be misused...

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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by monocasa on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @02:58PM (#18444318)
Or successfully pull off the library OS concept with POSIX as a first class citizen. Z/OS is most of the way there. NT has tried a couple times with the POSIX subsystem first, and now their Windows Subsystem for Linux work came out of MS Research's drawbridge library OS work.
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by pjmlp on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @03:38AM (#18448447)
And SQL Server on Linux makes use of library OS concept as well.
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by monocasa on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @10:48AM (#18450722)
That's heavily overstated.
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by pjmlp on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @03:30AM (#18448420)
On the real mobile OS world that is already a fact for user space apps.
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by karr0n on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @01:32PM (#18443419)
Virtualization/Emulation seems to be in the making. Let's see how it goes
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by nerdponx on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @02:39PM (#18444131)
As a user, I personally wouldn't mind a "fresh start" when it comes to userspace. Just look at Haiku -- yes, it's technically not a new design, but it sure ain't Unix.
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by waddlesplash on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @03:13PM (#18444467)
> yes, it's technically not a new design, but it sure ain't Unix.

Except we are? We are pretty POSIX compliant all the way into the kernel, we have "/dev", filemodes, etc. We don't have X11 or other UNIX staples, sure, but we are pretty UNIXy.

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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by nerdponx on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @07:15PM (#18446149)
I didn't know that. Thanks for clarifying.

By "userspace" I was more talking about "the programs and interfaces that a normal user interacts with". Haiku is pretty unique in that regard.

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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by waddlesplash on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @11:19PM (#18447453)
> By "userspace" I was more talking about "the programs and interfaces that a normal user interacts with". Haiku is pretty unique in that regard.

In terms of GUI apps... sorta? We use extended attributes and IPC messaging more than most Linux desktops do, that's true, and our UI/UX is often different.

But if you're talking CLI, then, also no. Bash is the default shell, coreutils are installed by default, sshd is activated by default, etc.

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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by pjmlp on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @03:39AM (#18448451)
I don't recall BeOS being that POSIX friendly though.

Haiku own extensions to the original design?

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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by waddlesplash on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @10:52AM (#18450776)
Yes, indeed; we implement most of the mainline POSIX specification where BeOS did not at all (it didn't even have pthreads.)
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by ptman on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @10:28AM (#18450544)
BeOS supported enough posix to use gcc.
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by pjmlp on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @10:31AM (#18450570)
ISO C and POSIX are orthogonal. GCC also supports non-POSIX platforms.
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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by adamnemecek on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @01:06PM (#18443153)
> The issue with such an OS is that there aren't won't be any libraries and tools.

This might not be as big of a deal. Rust increases your productivity quite a bit and I'm really impressed with the pace of progress in the community. I can imagine that new, better & more integrated tools will be made.

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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by nixpulvis on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @01:02PM (#18443122)
Don't even need to implement POSIX if you just emulate another OS inside, this seems to be a pretty viable solution for some of the cases.

I'm more concerned with drivers/firmware, which could be handled the same way, but seems less appropriate.

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Re:Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust by pjmlp on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @03:29AM (#18448415)
Ditching POSIX is all a matter of money and willingness, as proven by iOS, Android and ChromeOS.
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