Fork of Minix 3

[Perry Metzger]

Howdy! I have some research interests in multiserver microkernels with POSIX APIs, and the only open source one these days seems to be Minix 3. Sadly, as everyone is aware, the project has been effectively abandoned for some years now.

I wanted to warn the legacy project maintainers that I intend to set up a fork of the project on Github at some point next week unless someone gets in touch and says that this is a terrible idea. I also intend (initially only) to discuss work on the fork using the Google based groups unless people object to that.

I am not yet decided on whether to keep the name Minix for the fork, but if the legacy project owners object to continued use I would certainly find a new name.

A rough list of short term goals (subject to change):

1. Resurrect any outstanding pull requests against the legacy project and grant commit access to anyone appropriate who wishes to help.

2. Put all the documentation and wiki content from the legacy minix3.org site into the Github wiki.

3. Somehow set up a CI system.

3. Do a dumb release.

A rough list of medium term goals (subject to change, whim, and lack of resources):

1. Thorough individual test frameworks for each of the kernel processes

2. 64 bit x86 and ARM support

3. Oxidizing the kernel processes

4. Using the Rump framework to steal a wide variety of drivers and file systems

5. Automate userland maintenance

A long term goal is some improvements to the architecture and to formally verify the core microkernel itself. The latter might or might not prove to be practical.

**I make no promises that anything beyond the shortest term stuff will happen, especially if no one other than me has the slightest interest. This is all aspirational and subject to time availability and arbitrary whim.**

 Perry

[Prime Seal]

Can you list the Compilers and tools that you are going on to use?

[Perry Metzger]

I’d prefer that everything be on LLVM so that Rust can be used smoothly.

[Ian Douglas Scott]

If you want proper Rust support, a major thing you'll want is kernel thread support and a more complete pthreads implementation. I was able to get Rust's std to work on Minix but I had to use `pth` to get the pthreads functions it expects, and that will have issues in some cases since it isn't preemptive.

https://iandouglasscott.com/2019/02/18/cross-compiling-rust-code-to-minix

If Minix were maintained, and had the necessary pthreads support natively, a port like that could be upstreamed into Rust as a tier 3 target. When I did that port I was interested in what it would look like to port one of Minix's servers to Rust, but I didn't end up doing anything other than testing this with ripgrep.

[Prime Seal]

What assembler are you going to use?

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[Prime Seal]

Which version of Minix 3 are you going to fork?

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023, 15:31 Perry Metzger, <pe...@piermont.com> wrote:

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[Prime Seal]

Which version of Minix 3 are you going to fork?

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023, 15:31 Perry Metzger, <pe...@piermont.com> wrote:

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