Flux toolkit as LispOS base

[Dwight Hughes]

Tim Pierce wrote:
>[...] 
> I spent some of last night reading several of the URLs that have
> been sent to this list.  The Flux project seems especially
> relevant to what we are doing here, and I think we may want to
> reconsider using it as a possible base.
> 
> These items are of particular interest, since they directly
> address concerns that have been raised here about the feasibility
> of ``starting from scratch'', and the importance of using existing
> components.  This strikes me as a very exciting potential start
> for a low-level Lisp kernel.  I'd like to hear feedback from other
[...]

I very much agree -- there are actually two potential sources of Unixisms
and crippling. The Linux/*BSD kernel is one but the other is CMUCL. No
fault of
theirs but it was written *for* such systems -- as a result it contains
whatever
compromises, workarounds, or low-level changes were necessary to get it to
run decently on such kernels. In short, it is warped to fit a hostile
environment.
We must use care not to propagate this into the core of the LispOS.
Starting
with a mostly clean slate with the Flux OStoolkit should allow us to
properly
identify and correct most such problem spots.

I'm not against using CMUCL, it is only that we should keep this in mind
and
not warp our environment to fit a tool that was warped to fit unix-style
kernels.