v6

[lkg]

I see that on the website it says that we're going over v6 tomorrow,
which is cool, but does anyone know what exactly we're doing with it?
Just reading it and trying to make sense of what it does, or trying to
imitate it, or analyzing why it was written the way it was, or...?

Also, are we supposed to have read the mentioned sections before
tomorrow/ I skimmed it and read a few of the comments, but I don't
actually understand it at all. :( Has anyone else looked at, and can
you tell me how to go about reading it so that it makes more sense? Or
should I just give up and wait for lecture?

Nov 4 : UNIX v6 overview and the PDP/11
* Reading: Lions sections 1-4, 6.1-6.2

[Michael Saelee]

Glad you're trying to stay on top of things!

The prescribed reading is from the commentary section of the book, so
the idea is that you read over Lions' comments whilst referring to the
relevant sections of the v6 source code (sections 1-4 and 6.1-6.2 all
deal with sections of code from Part I of the v6 source).

I know that it's probably pretty intimidating to start with, and if
you've given it your best shot -- say, a couple of hours worth of
reading and trying to figure out the point of / control flow of the
relevant assembly / C source -- then you're good. The most important
thing is that you come to lecture with a rudimentary understanding of
what we're going to cover, and, ideally, a boatload of questions for
me as we do the code review together.

Hope that helps,

- Michael