Re: The Hurd: what is it?

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   It is as if you are not listening still.

The same can be said about you.

   Unix 32V (the Vax port of V7) was certainly Unix.  There were two
   successor projects: BSD and System III.

I don't know about System III, but BSD was a _fork_ of UNIX, it wasn't
developed as part of the `offical' UNIX system.  You didn't have 2
different UNIX systems, one different from the other using differnet
API's from Bell labs now did yah? :-)

   So I suspect that labelling is *not* the issue; that the real issue
   is that you want me to declare "People should work on the Mach
   version and give up on L4" or else to declare "People should work
   on the L4 port and abandon the Mach version."

That is the same thing as labeling.

   But hey, maybe I don't have a preference?

I think you made that clear by now...

   It is extremely unlikely that we want to use Mach forever.

Mach as it _currently_ looks like.  I think that it would be possible
to frob Mach so badly that it wouldn't look like what it looks like
today (i.e. develop our own microkernel).
   
   It is therefore true that any work which factors as much
   Mach-dependency out of the code-base would be productive.

Problem with that is that you don't even know if the code-base will be
used, so such factoring will be useless.

   I do not have any particular opinions about what should be
   considered and in what order, but I do agree with Marcus that some
   redesign of some core interfaces may be in order (though, I repeat,
   I do not have an opinion about *when* that should be done).

Nobody is opposing a redesign of core interfaces.  I atleast if I'm
opposing anything is the total rewrite, and total redesign philosophy.

   This redesign could be conveniently done piecemeal in most cases,
   and could be done together with the above-mentioned refactoring.
   Giving the Hurd its own IDL, for example, not tied so strongly to
   Mach, would be an excellent start.

That would be cool, if the current code base will be used at all.  It
the transition from Mach to L4 or whatever was done in a incremental
way, I wouldn't be bitching.  But it simply is not done that way.