[coyotos-dev] IDL compatibility

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Mon, 2007-06-18 at 10:27 -0700, Charles Landau wrote:

> So, thinking about how you would port a program, say from Coyotos to 
> CapROS, without major rewriting:
> In cases where methods are identical (and there will be some), you could
> 
> #include <coyotosCompatibility.h>
> 
> which contains for example
> 
> #define coyotos_spacebank_alloc capros_spacebank_alloc
> (or better, define coyotos_spacebank_alloc as an inline function that 
> calls capros_spacebank_alloc)
> 
> Is this what you have in mind?

Not at all. An approach like this is extremely unlikely to work, because
the interfaces are not the same in most cases.

What seems more likely is that we would simply take your IDL files,
compile them to produce the expected stubs (but generated with our IDL
compiler, therefore using the Coyotos transport mechanism), and then
implement a simulation of the appropriate interface in the appropriate
servers, or in front ends.

However, I should make something clear about the model of interface
naming in the Coyotos tree. The "coyotos." package will be used only for
the kernel and the core domains. Other domains (and hopefully most user
domains) will be built following the Java model, where the package name
becomes something like:

	com.eros_os.mumble

I would recommend that you adopt this convention as well.

For interoperability, the thing we most need to watch out for is that
the name mangling strategies of the respective IDL compilers remain
compatible.

shap
-- 
Jonathan S. Shapiro, Ph.D.
Managing Director
The EROS Group, LLC