NOUX limitations

[Daniel Waddington]

Hi Norman,

I see.  I really like the relatively straightforward ability to integrate a
GNU automake based build tree.  I wonder if it is straightforward to extend
this capability for non-NOUX apps.

I think your line of thinking is reasonable- NOUX provides a way to get off
the ground quickly for building a simple UNIX like environment.

Daniel

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Norman Feske [mailto:norman.feske at ...1...]
> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 6:20 AM
> To: genode-main at lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: Re: NOUX limitations
> 
> Hi Daniel,
> 
> > Can someone explain the current limitations of NOUX?  I set up my own
> > NOUX package, then tried to call POSIX sleep and got the error
> > "Invalid attempt to create a thread besides main".  Why is this?
> 
> Noux is meant as a solution to enable the use of command-line-based GNU
> software on Genode. I am referring to classical Unix software such as
> compilers, shells, and utilities that interact with each other using pipes
and
> files.
> This is where Noux draws its line. It does not even attempt to provide
> functionalities that go beyond the scope of Unix.
> 
> > I also see that pthreads are not functional for NOUX.  Is there a
> > specific reason for this?  Can you tell me what your roadmap for NOUX
is?
> 
> POSIX threads would make Noux more complex but bring not much benefit.
> None of the tools we want to use with Noux requires them. My personal
> stance on the subject is that most use cases for 'pthreads' in the world
of
> Unix can and should be accommodated with classical Unix mechanisms (e.g.,
> using select, fork, and pipes). If your application requires POSIX threads
(as is
> the case for many GUI applications, or a Java virtual machine, or other
> runtimes), it is better to run it as a normal Genode component w/o using
> Noux. In this case, the 'pthread' library in the 'libports' repository
might be a
> good starting point.
> 
> Do you think that this line of thinking is reasonable?
> 
> Regarding your question about the road map, the Noux development is
> driven by the programs that we want to use. In the previous months, we
> concentrated on enabling the functionality needed to run the Genode tool
> chain. There is work in progress to bring Git to Noux as well. We will
continue
> to address all the programs that we need to use Genode as a development
> environment.
> 
> Whereby we have originally focused our attention on mere functionality, we
> just started to look into optimizations. For example, we recognized that
> executing the Genode tool chain on Noux is slower than on Linux.
> Consequently we are investigating ways to detect the bottlenecks and speed
> it up. Until mid 2013, we plan to add support for starting Genode
subsystems
> out of a Noux environment. So the worlds of Noux and plain Genode
> components will come closer together.
> 
> 
> However, multi-threaded Noux applications are not on the list. That said,
I do
> not want to discourage your from trying to add pthread-support into Noux
> yourself. Maybe I am wrong and this addition is less complex than I think?
> 
> Coming back to your question about sleep. In this case, the 'sleep'
> function uses the libc's default implementation, which tries to spawn a
timer
> thread on the first call. On Noux, we detect (and prevent) the creation of
> threads other than the main thread. So we would need to override the
> default 'sleep' function. This is apparently missing since 'sleep'
remained
> unused by all the Noux programs that we ported so far.
> If you like to see it added, would you like to open a new topic in our
issue
> tracker?
> 
> Cheers
> Norman
> 
> --
> Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske
> Genode Labs
> 
> http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org
> 
> Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden
> Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth
> 
>
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