MOSA first release

[rootnode]

After 1 year of work, we'd like to announce the first public pre-release of our MOSA (Managed Operating System Alliance) Framework version 0.1
The compiler is now able to AOT and JIT simple code, and we're able to boot a very simple and basic kernel example (Just outputs some texts, reads/writes memory, reads CMOS Time, etc).

The project is available at http://mosa-project.org

The MOSA Framework was planned as a set of tools, specifications and source code to foster development of managed operating systems based on the Common Intermediate Language. It still is, but we'll also provide an own full implementation of a kernel.
Target for the next versions is to further improve the compiler to be able to compile more complex kernel examples.

[redoktober]

amazing!
i've been following MOSA's development for about 7 months now.
and i must say, this is great news for all of us.
<especially those into managed code OSs.. >

i'll definitely download and take the kernel for a test drive...looking forward to it!

[redoktober]

okay, a couple of questions.
hope you don't mind

1) do you plan to support legacy code, written in say, C or VB6? if not, is there any plans for virtualization?

2) suppose..no, forget the 'suppose'. i *want* to write apps and stuff for the MOSA kernel. now, can i write them in other .NET languages such as VB.NET? or, for that matter, any other language which can compile to pure CIL?

uh..i guess that's it.
and once again, congratulations!

[rootnode]

1) do you plan to support legacy code, written in say, C or VB6? if not, is there any plans for virtualization?

This is not planned. Running unmanaged code defies the idea of creating a managed OS. But one can build an emulator or virtualization layer to run legacy code.

2) suppose..no, forget the 'suppose'. i *want* to write apps and stuff for the MOSA kernel. now, can i write them in other .NET languages such as VB.NET? or, for that matter, any other language which can compile to pure CIL?

Yes, this is possible. Our compiler/VM takes CIL code as input. So you can run every .NET 2.0 based CIL code.

[redoktober]

so technically, once i obtain the F# compiler, i could write device drivers and user software in a functional style??

über-cool!

[rootnode]

Technically this should work. As long as F# is .NET 2.0 compliant.

[redoktober]

that.....might be an issue.
F# is meant for .NET 4.0.

i guess i'll have to check the resultant CIL, and make it compatible..
but man, it's gonna be fun!

[rootnode]

After some hours of coding and debugging I finally got mosa working with linux. Prior to that we had some trouble when using mono to run our compiler.
But now it's fixed.

Take a look for yourself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgCdgaPDfn0

[rootnode]

Ok, we're approaching a final 0.3 release.

It now compiles on windows, linux and mac os ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQVAZo8zFzs ).
Next step is to rewrite or instruction handling in the compiler to actually use the Flyweight pattern to speed up compilation process.