Around a week back, a group of students of Reykjavic Univ released a patch to enable the Linux kernel to suppiort C++. what does this mean to kernel hackers?Well firstly, most hackers dont code C++. they code C :)and Object orientation is a paradigm free of programming languages. Yes, C may not have support for concepts like objects or inheritance etc directly, but the same can be achieved by the programmer himself. (Ref: Object oriented programming in ANSI C) It may now be able to code with "Objects" itself rather than just following the paradigm in C.Even in C++, there are only a handful of things that need runtime support, RTTI, dynamic casting, exception handling etc. The rest of the stuff dont.
Still, it will be defenitely interesting to see how this patch gets used (Getting Linus' green signal is the first hurdle). Linux is a monolithic architecture. Can this development mean that soon we have Microkernel linux and exokernel linux-es?
1 comment:
Anthro,
Linux can never be Micro-kernel now unless somebody takes up writing the OS from scratch in which case it will not be Linux anymore.
C++, I agree gives a cleaner way to do most things when you compare it with C. However while starting a huge project like an OS, elegent OO design is definitely not an easy thing to do. The general approach is (like what we are following in our project) People develop first phase of the project in C and after a better understanding of the system, they migrate to C++.
Starting with C++ is all the more prone to design errors unless the designers are experienced. I think you will agree with the standard SE rule: a design error is the most difficult thing to tackle with at the developemt and debugging stage.
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