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Hello,
I'm writing a kernel almost completely in C++ and for interrupt handling I defined the following classes:
Oxygen::Kernel::Processor::InterruptAdvisor (abstract) registering the IDT and holding an array of interrupt handlers
Oxygen::Kernel::Processor::InterruptHandler (abstract) can be registered to an interrupt advisor for one or more interrupt numbers
Oxygen::Kernel::Processor::X86::X86InterruptAdvisor: Implementation of InterruptAdvisor

The last one, X86InterruptAdvisor acts as a singleton. Handlers can be attached at anytime, as they are not directly written in the IDT, instead some proxy methods receive the original interrupt. Handlers are attached to an array InterruptHandler *handlers[256].

When my class is receiving an interrupt the instance of the X86InterruptAdvisor is fetched which will look whether there is a handler registered for the number of the fired interrupt. But the array is completely empty then, although it was filled before. Also a test property "int hello" which I set from zero to one before the interrupt fires is reset to zero.

A snippet of my code I use for interrupt handling, jumped to by _int_callNUMBER:

I wonder why every interrupt handler that ends up in a forum post here looks the same or nearly the same, despite being posted by different people? All of them set DS, ES, FS and GS to the same value when returning. Why everyone would want to restore FS and GS to the old value of DS is beyond me.

Gigasoft wrote:I wonder why every interrupt handler that ends up in a forum post here looks the same or nearly the same, despite being posted by different people? All of them set DS, ES, FS and GS to the same value when returning. Why everyone would want to restore FS and GS to the old value of DS is beyond me.

Most likely because JamesM does it that way and it's (AFAIK) still a prominent learning source.

berkus wrote:

Gigasoft wrote:I wonder why every interrupt handler that ends up in a forum post here looks the same or nearly the same, despite being posted by different people? All of them set DS, ES, FS and GS to the same value when returning. Why everyone would want to restore FS and GS to the old value of DS is beyond me.

Because unless you use FS and GS for some OS-specific needs, they are usual data access segments and have the same values as DS and ES.

Then there's the longmode OSes for which all those segments don't matter, just the DPL. FS and GS come from FSBASE and GSBASE so even if you do use them they're still the same selector.

Yeah, it's true, I set FS and GS, because JamesM did this. And as I'm not really sophisticated with OS dev and asm, I believed him that it made some sense.

Apparently my interrupt handling code is quite similar to the one used in Metta, I attached some code I use for interrupt handling.

You're right, I don't need the global, but it's really not the problem. The thing is, that may interrupt handler (handle(InterruptState) gets called, setUp() is always called before interrupts are thrown. I'm just trying to avoid real work in the constructor, but I might move it to the constructor later on. The worst thing is, that the array containing the list of interrupt handlers is completely empty (Yes, I filled it before the first interrupt).

I was planning to do some cleanup when I get it working, this was rather a quick and dirty approach. And, as I'm from the Java world, I'm really used to use massively nested namespaces and I really like it this way as it makes sense to me.