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Diffstat (limited to 'community/gsoc/project_ideas/driver_glue_code.mdwn')
| -rw-r--r-- | community/gsoc/project_ideas/driver_glue_code.mdwn | 37 |
1 files changed, 37 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/community/gsoc/project_ideas/driver_glue_code.mdwn b/community/gsoc/project_ideas/driver_glue_code.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2f0a0b59 --- /dev/null +++ b/community/gsoc/project_ideas/driver_glue_code.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +[[meta copyright="Copyright © 2008, 2009 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 userspace 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. + +Using [ddekit](http://demo.tudos.org/dsweeper_tutorial.html) instead of our +own glue code can be explored as a possible alternative approach. + +This is a doable, but pretty involved project. Experience with driver +programming under Linux (or BSD) is a must. (No Hurd-specific knowledge is +required, though.) + +This is [[GNU_Savannah_task 5488]]. + +Possible mentors: Samuel Thibault (youpi) + +Exercise: Try porting one driver from Linux 2.6 to run in the old framework. +The port needn't be elegant or complete; but it would be nice if you could get +it to work at least partially... |