Re: [MiNT] Future (was Re: MiNT 1.16)

["Konrad Kokoszkiewicz" <draco@obta.uw.edu.pl>]

> It does matter for the particular case we were talking about here
> (privilege checks in a library that gets called a lot) as well as for

A privilege check is usually one or two comparisons and a branch.
Not much, really.

> > > > This is the problem of answering the question, whether we want MiNT
to be
> > > > a complete self-contained OS, or rather we want it to rely on
underlying
> > >
> > > Why would anyone want that?
> >
> > Why anyone would want what?
>
> 'MiNT to be a complete self-contained OS'.

Anyone who would want to have full control on its operation. Currently MiNT
is
dependent on the BIOS in ROM (not open source) and hard disk driver (not
open source either).

>> So, you think a 'complete self-contained' MiNT should include the
> kernel, drivers for various kinds of hardware, and an application
> level graphics library (and a badly designed one at that)?
>
> I would not want to force the VDI on anyone, and MiNT can work just
> as well with, for example, X on top of it if you want graphics.

Including VDI (or whatever) drivers doesn't mean forcing. Everyone still
can behave just like there was no driver. At his own risk, of course :-)

> I'd rather have the VDI 'engine' running as a user mode library, with
> kernel calls where necessary (for mutual exclusion, for example)
> and a 'server' task to handle global things (such as the mouse pointer).
> Each task would have its virtual workstation structures allocated in
> its own memory space.
> (Incidentally, this is how fVDI is/was to work under Fenix.)

Very nice idea, but this would require shared libraries (as it doesn't make
much sense to statically link such a thing to every GEM program).


CVV

--
Konrad M. Kokoszkiewicz
http://draco.atari.org

** Ea natura multitudinis est,
** aut seruit humiliter, aut superbe dominatur (Liv. XXIV, 25)