On Mon, Oct 8, 2018, 17:15 Bakul Shah <ba...@bitblocks.com> wrote: > On Mon, 08 Oct 2018 19:03:49 -0400 Dan Cross <cro...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > plan9 is breathtakingly elegant, but this is in no small part because as > a > > research system it had the luxury of simply ignoring many thorny problems > > that would have marred that beauty but that the developers chose not to > > tackle. Some of these problems have non-trivial domain complexity and, > > while "modern" systems are far too complex by far, that doesn't mean that > > all solutions can be recast as elegantly simple pearls in the plan9 > style. > > One thing I have mused about is recasting plan9 as a > microkernel and pushing out a lot of its kernel code into user > mode code. It is already half way there -- it is basically a > mux for 9p calls, low level device drivers, VM support & some > process related code. Such a redesign can be made more secure > and more resilient. The kind of problems you mention are > easier to fix in user code. Different application domains may > have different needs which are better handled as optional user > mode components. > > Said another way, keep the good parts of the plan9 design and > reachitect/reimplement the kernel + essential drivers/usermode > daemons. This is unlikely to happen (without some serious > funding) but still fun to think about! If done, this would be > a more radical departure than Oberon-7 compared to Oberon but > in the same spirit. >
I've mused about that also. My problem has been finding the time. I think it would be a worthwhile project. Not entirely unrelated, I've been tinkering with seL4. >
