Anyone thinking of restarting their OS? Starting afresh?

pcmattman · Post by **pcmattman** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 4:25 am

Hi JamesM,

My OS rewrite (Mattise) is going to be in complete C++ and will abstract all lower-level code into classes (I love polymorphism) so that the OS can be shifted to a new platform by simply modifying a set of low-level routines.

Not to impose any ideas on you guys or anything, but I really think that that's a good plan for any OS written in C++ as long as you do have a good knowledge of polymorphism and classes in C++ and have worked with C++ in a non-hosted environment (like an OS).

bluecode · Post by **bluecode** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 9:43 am

pcmattman wrote:My OS rewrite (Mattise) is going to be in complete C++ and will abstract all lower-level code into classes (I love polymorphism) so that the OS can be shifted to a new platform by simply modifying a set of low-level routines.

That's also our plan. I will add my interface design (I was put in charge of some initial design) to the project's wiki for you (if you want to) and the others (you don't get a choice

) to criticize.

Providing an abstract interface is always a good idea and is not really a language choice. You can do the same thing in C. The abstraction just consists of structures + functions instead of classes. I think C++ here just adds syntactic sugar and makes automatic documentation generation easier.

os64dev · Post by **os64dev** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 2:23 pm

pcmattman wrote:Hi JamesM,
Not to impose any ideas on you guys or anything, but I really think that that's a good plan for any OS written in C++ as long as you do have a good knowledge of polymorphism and classes in C++ and have worked with C++ in a non-hosted environment (like an OS).

Why not also use the bridge and abstract factory design patterns. Then you can switch drivers, and probably if designed correctly parts of the kernel, runtrime. This is a theory ofcourse but could work.

JamesM · Post by **JamesM** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:24 am

os64dev wrote:
pcmattman wrote:Hi JamesM,
Not to impose any ideas on you guys or anything, but I really think that that's a good plan for any OS written in C++ as long as you do have a good knowledge of polymorphism and classes in C++ and have worked with C++ in a non-hosted environment (like an OS).
Why not also use the bridge and abstract factory design patterns. Then you can switch drivers, and probably if designed correctly parts of the kernel, runtrime. This is a theory ofcourse but could work.

Sounds like a good plan. Incidentally I've never been too much of an abstract class factory fan - it smacks of Java to me

bluecode · Post by **bluecode** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 5:10 am

We are four now (JamesM, Tyler-Osdev, pcmattman and myself) and agreed that we do not consider any other "applications" at this point in time. That is because if we would we end up discussing everything and don't get anything done. After a few releases we would really appreciate help from others.

ucosty · Post by **ucosty** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 5:46 am

I'll be happy to do the peanut gallery thing.

lukem95 · Post by **lukem95** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:58 am

id love to help out when it gets off the ground, i'm not the most experienced person here, but my kernel atleast has got past Hello World status (for the first attempt, and the rewrite).

If you need any help or testing id be moe than happy...

AJ · Post by AJ » Fri Jan 25, 2008 10:14 am

Good luck, guys - I look forward to seeing the results.

Cheers,
Adam