4 Feb
2002
4 Feb
'02
12:48 p.m.
On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 08:57:28PM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
Thats what I was thinking - it also alows a honing of very rusty skills,
and also allows building of tools that will be needed on the way.
Also I dont suppose that anyone has the tarred up source for MiniUnix
they could mail me? (It just saves me from extracting it out of
the tape/disk images the hard way).
One thing I am undecided about though is this:
Should the source be converted to from pre K&R C to ANSI C for
the sake of updating the system to run on a newer architecture (though
not much since the PC was released in 1980 and we only need 16bits).
OR
Should we attempt to provide a new compiler (or preparser) which will
take the pre K&R C and just compile it as is?
I have to admit the above comments are straight off the top of my head,
and haven't been considered at any length and indeed should be (over
several pints of ale).
OK once we get to that stage (I am still reading up and checking out
the different architectures at present - so me writing code
isnt going to happen yet until I at least have been over the printed source
with a red pen) which could be a while, I guess either I can run
a list here at UKC or maybe Warren would like to put one up at Minnie?
Regards
Paul
Well, seeing as though Paul referred to me (see
below), I'll throw my
own $0.02 in. I'd recommend V7 for several reasons:
- it's more portable
- the flavour of C used is more modern
- it's got more useful applications (yacc etc.)
- you get the stdio library
- one last thing, there were some awful race conditions and
bogosities in V6 that just had to be fixed. See the
`50 bugs' tape, and also Dennis' own admission about
6th Edition savu/retu at
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html
Hmmm. I am starting (I have to admit) to lean towards V7 as my thoughts
continue. I hadn't seen the "50 bugs" tape - although I believe I have
a copy archived somewhere. Must take a gander at some point and mount
it on the emulator.
Pondering just
this over the weekend has left me wondering whether
MiniUnix would be a better initial place to start - as its essentially
V6, but without memory management or pipes. Which as a starting point
for the experiment may be an easier place to start.
You could port that in a short amount of time, and treat it as a
warming-up exercise! Also as a
sideline, I don't know how the list owner of this list
feels about this discussion potentially swamping the list.
I think the list needs some traffic :-) It might be worth setting up
a list for the e-mails between co-developers, but also to have periodic
status reports and questions sent to this list.