Hi,
I have a few questions about GNU Hurd and Mach.
1. What is the current development status of Hurd?
2. What is the difference between Debian Hurd and just the "Hurd".
- Are they maintained separate cvs branches, totally different code base
etc?
- Does this mean that Debian is releasing their own version of Hurd?
3. Is Mach the "final" microkernel for Hurd and is Hurd using Mach 4 or Mach
1?
- Has the microkernel been decided?
- What about L4, is this a candidate?
4. What is the overall status of the entire project?
- Is it going to be released soon?
- Is there much contribution from the community being made?
5. I would like to install and develop/for Mach and Hurd
- Is there any documentation somewhere on how to set it up?
Thanks
Shams
Help-hurd mailing list
Help-hurd (AT) gnu (DOT) org

Hi,

first of all: I am not really involved in this process and I am not a
native english speaker, but I hope I can give some answers (as far as I
know, or think to know).

2) The difference is just that there is a "useable" installer based on a
debian (linux) distro. There is no real difference in the base code of
the hurd apart from the fact that several patches are included which are
not (maybe not yet) in the current cvs tree. The main purpose of this
debian/hurd distro is to have an installer and to have the ability to
port some packages to the hurd and see what happens. So no, they do not
release a separate Version of the Hurd but a more "user friendly"
version (no cross compiling or cross installation) So this might also
tend to an answer to 1):
1) The current status of the Hurd and Mach is unknown to me, but I think
that there is really much to do. As far as I know there are several
decisions currently made regarding the future of the Hurd.
3) As far as I know the current thing is this: Mach is not the final
kernel for the Hurd. There were things done to make the L4 the kernel
for the hurd (Marcus Brinkmann was able to start one program running the
hurd on top of the l4 microkernel). What I heard recently (2 minutes
ago) is that those things are stopped for now until certain technical
questions are answered. I suppose the focus is still on making mach more
stable. You got 2 opportunities: using mach 1.9 from the cvs tree or
using oskit-mach from somewhere else ;)
4) Well It was released as 0.2 in 1996 ;) But if you mean when there
might be a stable version for working (X working correctly, nice
installer, and so on), I really have no idea. The community still is
alive and there are contributions made, but the problem in my eyes is,
that it is too unstable to work with it, so contributors come and go,
which might be good too, so new ideas come.
5) The really interesting point. If you want to try to install the hurd
on your system, the "easiest" way, in my eyes is using the debian
package (). the other way,
there is a problem: not all hardware is supported (in fact, I think
hurd/mach are far away from that) and so, you surely can install the S
on your system, but if it will run is another question, so you should
think about installing it on a virtual machine (ie qemu).
some useful links:

http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/hurd/ (some "older" information)
http://hurd.gnufans.org/ (wiki)
http://wiki.debian.org/TheHurd (maybe one of the links there will suit you)

Greetings
Arguri
Hi,

I have a few questions about GNU Hurd and Mach.

1. What is the current development status of Hurd?

2. What is the difference between Debian Hurd and just the "Hurd".
- Are they maintained separate cvs branches, totally different code base
etc?
- Does this mean that Debian is releasing their own version of Hurd?

3. Is Mach the "final" microkernel for Hurd and is Hurd using Mach 4 or Mach
1?
- Has the microkernel been decided?
- What about L4, is this a candidate?

4. What is the overall status of the entire project?
- Is it going to be released soon?
- Is there much contribution from the community being made?

5. I would like to install and develop/for Mach and Hurd
- Is there any documentation somewhere on how to set it up?

Thanks
Shams

Help-hurd mailing list
Help-hurd (AT) gnu (DOT) org

Hi,

Tue, 10, 2006 at 09:16:18PM +1300, Shams wrote:

1. What is the current development status of Hurd?

Not sure what you mean exactly. It's mostly working, but there are a
number of serious drawbacks:
- Some specific PSIX bits are still missing or implemented incorrectly,
so not all software can be used
- Very bad hardware support. Many subsystems don't exist at all, like
USB or sound
- There are stability and performance issues

2. What is the difference between Debian Hurd and just the "Hurd". -
Are they maintained separate cvs branches, totally different code base
etc? - Does this mean that Debian is releasing their own version of
Hurd?

Debian uses CVS HEAD plus a number of more or less experimental patches,
that for one reason or the other didn't make it into the official
repository so far.

3. Is Mach the "final" microkernel for Hurd and is Hurd using Mach 4
or Mach 1? - Has the microkernel been decided? - What about L4, is
this a candidate?

Presently Hurd is using gnumach 1.3, which is a fork of Mach 4.

Mach is definitely not the "final" microkernel, though it's not quite
clear what will be. It's possible either to switch to some other
existing microkernel, to create a new one from scratch, or to introduce
significant changes to gnumach (effectively creating a new microkernel
as well).

However, nobody is actively working on switching to a different
microkernel right now. The port to L4 has been abandonned because of
technical problems with the current L4 Pistachio kernel; but some of the
upcoming new L4 variants might be more suitable, so L4 is still a
possible candidate.

Note that there is a parallel effort to create a new system (called
ngHurd or similar for now), which will definitely use a different
microkernel (probably Coyotos, but not decided yet); however, it will
have a very different design and properties, and thus can't be
considered a direct successor to the existing Hurd implementation.

4. What is the overall status of the entire project? - Is it going to
be released soon?

Probably there won't be any official releases of Hurd on Mach any time
soon, because a) nobody seems interested in tackling a release, and b)
some people actually think it would be a bad idea.

However, there are more or less regular releases of Debian GNU/Hurd.

As for ngHurd, it's still in plannig state.
- Is there much contribution from the community being made?

Depends on your definition of "much". There is a number of people
contributing, but most of them only occasionally due to time
constraints.

Also depends on what kind of contribution you mean. Some people work on
the core (microkernel, libc, system servers); some work on additional
translators; some work on porting and packaging existing software
(mostly for Debian); some work on the ngHurd drafts; some just do
testing and/or help out in other ways.

5. I would like to install and develop/for Mach and Hurd - Is there
any documentation somewhere on how to set it up?

There are various (partially contradicting) documents available at
debian.org/ports/hurd , hurd.gnu.org , and hurd.gnufans.org .
-antrik-

Help-hurd mailing list
Help-hurd (AT) gnu (DOT) org

Fri, 13, 2006 at 08:39:36PM +1300, Shams wrote:
When you are saying that Debian uses the "CVS HEAD". Do you
mean that this is the offical GNU Hurd CVS repository that is maintained
by the GNU project?
Yes.
Help-hurd mailing list
Help-hurd (AT) gnu (DOT) org

Fri, 13, 2006 at 08:20:09PM +1300, Shams wrote:
Hope that if a micro-kernel is chosen for Hurd other than Mach or if a Mach
rewrite takes place, then the language "still" remains C/C++ otherwise I
think
it is going to deter a lot of developers.

I have read up on Coyotos but it seems to be using BitC, which I think will
frighten a lot of developers?

The idea of using an existing microkernel is that Hurd developers do not
need to bother with its implementation, only with the interfaces - in
practise this did not work out for Mach as it was not getting further
developped upstream, but hopefully it will be true for the next
microkernel we choose.

Michael

Help-hurd mailing list
Help-hurd (AT) gnu (DOT) org

Fri, 13, 2006 at 08:16:24PM +1300, Shams wrote:
Can you please help me draw a line between a Hurd release and the Debian
distribution?

There have been no GNU or GNU Hurd releases for about 10 years now.

Michael

Help-hurd mailing list
Help-hurd (AT) gnu (DOT) org

Can you please help me draw a line between a Hurd release and the
Debian distribution?

There have been no GNU or GNU Hurd releases for about 10 years now.

There have been a couple snapshot releases of GNU. See
and
http://www.update.uu.se/~ams/GNU

Help-hurd mailing list
Help-hurd (AT) gnu (DOT) org

Thanks much for the info.

When you are saying that Debian uses the "current cvs tree". Do you mean
that
this is the offical GNU Hurd CVS repository that is maintained by the GNU
project?

Can you please explain what you mean by "user friendly"?
- Do you mean that Debian includes some extra packages with the official GNU
Hurd distribution, such as?

Thanks
Shams

Message
From: "Arguri" <larguri_2006 (AT) gmx (DOT) net>
Newsgroups: gmane.os.hurd.general
Sent: Tuesday, 10, 2006 11:18 PM
Subject: Re: Hurd questions

Hi,

first of all: I am not really involved in this process and I am not a
native english speaker, but I hope I can give some answers (as far as I
know, or think to know).

2) The difference is just that there is a "useable" installer based on a
debian (linux) distro. There is no real difference in the base code of the
hurd apart from the fact that several patches are included which are not
(maybe not yet) in the current cvs tree. The main purpose of this
debian/hurd distro is to have an installer and to have the ability to port
some packages to the hurd and see what happens. So no, they do not release
a separate Version of the Hurd but a more "user friendly" version (no
cross compiling or cross installation) So this might also tend to an
answer to 1):
1) The current status of the Hurd and Mach is unknown to me, but I think
that there is really much to do. As far as I know there are several
decisions currently made regarding the future of the Hurd.
3) As far as I know the current thing is this: Mach is not the final
kernel for the Hurd. There were things done to make the L4 the kernel for
the hurd (Marcus Brinkmann was able to start one program running the hurd
on top of the l4 microkernel). What I heard recently (2 minutes ago) is
that those things are stopped for now until certain technical questions
are answered. I suppose the focus is still on making mach more stable. You
got 2 opportunities: using mach 1.9 from the cvs tree or using oskit-mach
from somewhere else ;)
4) Well It was released as 0.2 in 1996 ;) But if you mean when there
might be a stable version for working (X working correctly, nice
installer, and so on), I really have no idea. The community still is alive
and there are contributions made, but the problem in my eyes is, that it
is too unstable to work with it, so contributors come and go, which might
be good too, so new ideas come.
5) The really interesting point. If you want to try to install the hurd on
your system, the "easiest" way, in my eyes is using the debian package
(). the other way, there is a
problem: not all hardware is supported (in fact, I think hurd/mach are far
away from that) and so, you surely can install the S on your system, but
if it will run is another question, so you should think about installing
it on a virtual machine (ie qemu).
some useful links:
--
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/hurd/ (some "older" information)
http://hurd.gnufans.org/ (wiki)
http://wiki.debian.org/TheHurd (maybe one of the links there will suit
you)

Greetings
Arguri
>Hi,
>>
>I have a few questions about GNU Hurd and Mach.
>>
>1. What is the current development status of Hurd?
>>
>2. What is the difference between Debian Hurd and just the "Hurd".
>- Are they maintained separate cvs branches, totally different code base
>etc?
>- Does this mean that Debian is releasing their own version of Hurd?
>>
>3. Is Mach the "final" microkernel for Hurd and is Hurd using Mach 4 or
>Mach 1?
>- Has the microkernel been decided?
>- What about L4, is this a candidate?
>>
>4. What is the overall status of the entire project?
>- Is it going to be released soon?
>- Is there much contribution from the community being made?
>>
>5. I would like to install and develop/for Mach and Hurd
>- Is there any documentation somewhere on how to set it up?
>>
>Thanks
>Shams
>

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