[coyotos-dev] Preemption again

[Trey Boudreau]

On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 04:56:51PM -0500, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> 
> To make the issues concrete, try thinking it through for watchdog
> timers. In UNIX we would send a signal, but we don't have to worry
> about lost receives in UNIX. In Coyotos, what we need to do is send a
> message to a helper (the proxy) which can either whack the real
> recipient for us somehow or advise the recipient (perhaps via shared
> memory) that a notification has arrived. The proxy probably *doesn't*
> know how to handle the event specifically.
> 
> The main advantage to doing this with a proxy receiver is that all of
> the delivery mechanism is taken entirely out of the kernel's hands.
> 
> Does any of this clarify anything?
> 
Just a few questions/comments.  I apologize for their scatter-shot
nature.

This implies that a debugger would have to manage both the primary debug
target and the proxy receiver, right?  Can the proxy receiver have a
proxy receiver?

At first blush it seems like a debugger would need carnal knowledge of
the proxy-receiver/target signaling mechanism.  I suppose plug-ins could
help here.

What manages the proxy receiver slot: the language runtime or the
program itself?

I assume the proxy receiver slot can change over the life of the
program.  How will a debugger track this change?

-- Trey