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+[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation,
+Inc."]]
+
+[[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable
+id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
+document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
+any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
+Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license
+is included in the section entitled
+[[GNU Free Documentation License|/fdl]]."]]"""]]
+
+[[!meta title="New Driver Glue Code"]]
+
+Although a driver framework in user space would be desirable, presently the Hurd
+uses kernel drivers in the microkernel,
+[[GNU_Mach|microkernel/mach/gnumach]]. (And changing this would be far beyond a
+GSoC project...)
+
+The problem is that the drivers in GNU Mach are presently old Linux drivers
+(mostly from 2.0.x) accessed through a glue code layer. This is not an ideal
+solution, but works quite OK, except that the drivers are very old. The goal of
+this project is to redo the glue code, so we can use drivers from current Linux
+versions, or from one of the free BSD variants.
+
+While it would be certainly possible to create custom glue code again, a more
+sustainable and probably also easier approach is to use
+[[DDE]] instead -- it already
+does the hard work of providing an environment where the foreign drivers can
+run, and has the additional advantage of being externally maintained.
+
+This is a doable, but pretty involved project. Previous experience with driver
+programming probably is a must. (No Hurd-specific knowledge is required,
+though.)
+
+This is [[!GNU_Savannah_task 5488]].
+[[open issues/user-space device drivers]].
+[[open issues/device drivers and io systems]].
+
+
+Possible mentors: Samuel Thibault (youpi)
+
+Exercise: Take a driver for some newer piece of hardware (e.g. Intel e1000
+ethernet) from a recent system, and try to port it to run in the existing
+driver framework in GNU Mach. Completing the port might be too involved for the
+exercise; but it's pretty likely that you will find something else to improve
+in the glue code while working on this...
+
+*Status*: [[Zheng Da|zhengda]] is working on DDE, and has mostly completed the
+initial port.