On Tuesday, 1 November 2016 at 16:22:58 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
wrote:
On 11/01/2016 09:41 AM, Wild wrote:
On Tuesday, 1 November 2016 at 12:12:29 UTC, Heisenberg wrote:
Just an idea. Do you think it would have any advantage
compared to the
one that is written in C?
I think it wouldn't really be worth it.
I tend to think the same but for different reasons. Currently
the Linux kernel is a large mature product that has its own
evolution. It would be very difficult to reimplement it from
first principles in any other language and get a competitive,
timely product.
As an intellectual exercise, D's safety would help but at this
point impart little advantage; the kernel has reached good
stability and safety bugs are few and far across. This trend is
likely for the foreseeable future.
Security is a big topic for Linux:
https://lwn.net/Articles/662219/
Mostly the problem are drivers. They are produced hastily by
careless companies without the scrutiny of the core kernel parts
(like scheduler, file system, etc). I think D might help there,
because it could enforce @safe or other properties onto the
drivers.
Nevertheless, I don't see a successful D kernel in the
foreseeable future. Building a kernel for IoT devices is trendy,
but you want a lot more portability for that and C compilers are
everywhere. On the server, you could build a hypervisor OS with
D, but currently containers are hyped so much more. You'd only
have a chance, if you also port the JVM onto your D-OS. Still,
where is the advantage to Linux?
