What is an aspect ?

[Laurent Martelli]

>>>>> "TMF" == Thomas M Farrelly <s720@ii.uib.no> writes:

  TMF> I try again:

  TMF> Which of the following does not fit in a microkernel: I/O
  TMF> processes bootcode ADT's GUI the stack the heap security memory
  TMF> management ( GC ) networking minesweeper

I think dividing things into kernel/user-space is wrong. This is not
a good way of seeing things. I'd rather talk about
aspects. "Minesweeper" would belong to the functional aspect, where
you *describe* the services available to the user of the
system. Security would be another aspect, describing which services
are available to which users. You don't need to know about security to
describe the Minesweeper service. And you shouldn't have to think
about a particular GUI neither. The GUI could be a "click-and-play"
one, or it could be a one line text screen. Memory management,
networking and others are just runtime optimisation issues. If you
execute the minesweeper on a single machine, you don't have to care
about network. And obviously, the minesweeper should not be network
aware. But it should work in a network environment if needed. To
achieve this, only the interpretor running the minesweeper need to be
network aware. 

That's why I think the question is not "What is a kernel", but rather
what is an aspect.

-- 
Laurent Martelli
martelli@iie.cnam.fr