Re: Lua-based OS (was: Safe Lua)

[Marc Balmer <marc@...>]

Am 03.08.11 19:36, schrieb Bogdan Marinescu:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 5:17 PM, Pierre Chapuis <catwell@archlinux.us> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 3 Aug 2011 09:39:14 -0300, Elias Barrionovo wrote:
>>
>>> eLua ( http://www.eluaproject.net/ [2] ) was reported to run on a
>>>
>>> pentium with no OS underneath it:
>>> http://wiki.eluaproject.net/**Booting%20eLua%20on%20a%20PC<http://wiki.eluaproject.net/Booting%20eLua%20on%20a%20PC>[3]
>>>
>>
>> This is the kind of thing I was looking for, thanks.
>> Sounds like I should take a look at eLua.
>>
> 
> Sorry to disappoint you, but eLua booting directly on a PC was merely a demo
> which was meant to show eLua's high portability (also something I wrote
> because I didn't have any eLua-capable micros back then). I didn't try this
> specific port in a while and I'm not ever sure if it boots on the PC anymore
> (it should); even if it does, you're going to have a really hard time
> writing drivers for it. This is one of the main reasons that makes
> implementing a new functional OS on a PC nowadays a quick and painful
> failure. One simply can't keep up with all the hardware without a developer
> base comparable with the one behind Linux. You could choose a limited number
> of peripherals that you support (this is the approach taken by MenuetOS for
> example), but then you'll end up configuring a PC for the sole purpose of
> running your OS. Not many people are willing to do that. In the end such a
> project is interesting, a lot of fun to work on, it has an extremely high
> educational value, but don't expect it to be practical. For a PC, running
> Lua on top of a Linux kernel sounds like a much better idea.

Slightly related:

It might of interest to some folke here that NetBSD contains Lua in base
and that there is an (ongoing) project to Lua in the kernel as well.  It
was a GSoC project last year, run by Lourival Neta and mentored by me,
and Lourival and I recently decided to again hack a bit on this.

Prototyping device drivers in Lua, or do other "weird" stuff should be
possible.  Lua is loaded as a kernel module, but many, many things are
yet to be decied on how to do it.

It's an experiment....