lispOS and hardware

[Richard Coleman]

I agree that we don't really want to deal with all the
hardware mess.  At least not for awhile (and maybe ever).
Just think of the Linux kernel as our hardware abstraction
for the moment.  Let the Linux crowd write device drivers.

So we start out with

1) minimal Linux kernel (Debian or Slackware)
2) gcc and mininal libraries necessary to build
   everything from source
3) minimal set of utilities: tar, ls, whatever... things
   we don't want to re-implement right now.
4) sh and minimal set of shell scripts necessary to boot
   system
5) Xfree
6) CMU-CL
7) Lisp apps (CL-HTTP, hemlock, whatever...)

Then we set up a running distribution.  Something I can set
up and start hacking on.  lispOS 0.0 is born.  At some point,
we will want a full CVS tree of the whole thing.  We can easily
merge in changes from the CMU-CL tree as it develops.

Then we start working in 3 directions.

1) One group works on system stuff like threads,
   virtual memory/GC modifications.
2) Another group works on interfacing Xfree and CL.
3) Another group works on apps.

When this develops to a greater degree, then we can think
about things like lisp-driven scheduling, lisp-driven
network stacks, or persistent object file systems.

Keep it Simple... Let's not get ahead of ourselves...

Richard Coleman
coleman@math.gatech.edu