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List:       hurd-bug
Subject:    Re: Yet Another GSoC Project Ideas Post
From:       "Olaf Buddenhagen" <olafbuddenhagen () gmx ! net>
Date:       2008-03-23 21:47:14
Message-ID: 20080323214714.132950 () gmx ! net
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Hi,

> 1- procfs

> This sounds like a very interesting project and indeed it's the most
> interesting to me. However, I'm a newbie to the Linux kernel, and I am
> completely new to Hurd. I am quite passionate about the subject and I
> find it a good opportunity to improve my knowledge of both the Linux
> kernel and Hurd, but do you think this project would be doable within
> the summer period for someone with little experience?

That should be OK. You don't really need to know much about Linux for this task; and \
learing about Hurd programming is part of the idea of GSoC :-)

You need good general programming skills, of course...

> 2- Driver Glue code

> The idea description is quite obvious, again the question here is
> again of experience. I have basic knowledge about Linux device
> drivers, do you think it'd be feasible to apply for this one?

Well, what is "basic" knowledge? You should already be familiar enough to have a \
rough idea what the glue layer needs to provide to use Linux drivers... Or learn very \
quickly :-)

> 3- Sound support

> This is also a very interesting idea to me. And I already think about
> porting the AC'97 driver since it's very widespread. My question is
> about the sound server. I just wanted to know, whether the userspace
> server has to implement the ALSA/OSS API or should that be implemented
> in the kernel?

Well, as you will be porting ALSA or OSS drivers, it makes sense to more or less \
preserve the API at kernel level... What the server needs to do is translate UNIX \
device access (read/write, ioctl etc.) to Mach device calls -- should be pretty \
straightforward.

> Sorry if the question sounds stupid, please bear with
> my "newbieness" :P

No worries, your questions seem to show pretty good understanding :-)

> 4- Porting Hurd Servers from Cthreads to Pthreads

> I have some experience working with Pthreads under GNU/Linux. But does
> the project require knowledge about the internals of Pthreads (i.e. Is
> the student supposed to work on the HURD pthreads implementation), or
> is it only required from the students to port to Pthreads directly?

If all goes well, you shouldn't need to hack the pthreads implementation. It *could* \
happen though that you encounter some shortcomings that need to be fixed to \
proceed...

-antrik-
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