DISCLAIMER: These notes are from the defunct k8 project which precedes SquirrelJME. The notes for SquirrelJME start on 2016/02/26! The k8 project was effectively a Java SE 8 operating system and as such all of the notes are in the context of that scope. That project is no longer my goal as SquirrelJME is the spiritual successor to it.
09:38
So for KBFs I need the ability to both read and write with simple code.
09:48
I could use ELFs instead of KBFs. However ELF does not support some Java stuff natively so it will have to be virtualized within sections.
10:08
Many systems do support ELFs and can boot them directly.
10:24
With ELF, I can then do objdump or even native compilation of code (provided there is an abstraction layer which is required for system calls to operate).
10:31
Then I can test the programs on Linux and FreeBSD assuming I do not need to set an interpreter.
10:49
The main thing would be mapping the Bin
classes to the ELF format which can
be done. The main thing that the KBFs would have would be that it can store
stuff such as the constant pool. The format in ELFs could contain everything
the KBF can have also. The main thing though is that by using ELF I can reuse
part of the ELF library code for reading and writing compiled classes. ELF does
have SHF_LINK_ORDER
which I will use because that simplifies things. By
using that I can have it where I do not have to perform any relocation of code
or symbol lookup and do things rather directly. The only thing that requires
initialization on load would be the reference table.
10:54
So other linking utilties know that it is Foobarniux I will need to obtain an
OS ABI number from whoever organizes such things. Appears it is
registry@sco.com
. So once I have a drafted way of how I am going to use the
ELF I can mail them and request a number. Using ELF at least (before I decided
against it) should permit me to keep things simpler, and may help for testing
on host systems by linking in my recompiled code so that it runs in a simulated
userspace Linux or FreeBSD process.
11:00
On another note, I should add a type of field for the compiler that Foobarniux would provide. When building Foobarniux on Foobarniux itself it is possible that a bug in the compiler or partial implementation will cause it to not build properly so that then a bootstrap compiler would have to be used.
17:51
For system commands, I can have one command per package, since packages can depend on each other anyway.
19:29
The C library will essentially be in Java, except for the headers. The headers will use special attributes similar to GCC ones which specify a binding call point for execution.
23:02
For C compilation, instead of writing byte code myself I can instead source code translation from C to Java. Then I can just take that code and then compile it with the built in Java compiler.
23:10
Of course I need to work on ELF support though so I can get a bootable kernel. A C compiler can come later on when needed.
23:20
Going to actually need a method which can set the specific byte order of the data accessor (that is make a new one). An ELF may be read opened as big endian but it might just end up being little endian formatted.