GUI systems

[Kragen Sitaker]

Shap writes:
> I'm just not going to take the heat for the 82 megabytes.

I didn't post to put the heat on you or anyone else; I'm not really in
a position to do so, after all.  I posted because I thought I had
identified some things that could be done to make EROS more widely
adopted.

> It's really not
> *my* fault that the EGCS people keep breaking their compiler.

Of course not.  By the way, what happens, specifically, when they break
it?  Is it just creating non-ELF ELF files?

>  Actually, this is part of why I'm switching to C.

Unrelated to EROS, I'd be interested in hearing the rest of why you're
switching to C.  I have my own set of beefs with C++, but I'd like to
hear yours :)

> Also, compare these
> numbers to scratch-building a linux system and things start to look pretty
> good.

Yes, although trying Linux is easier than trying EROS right now.  You
can download a couple of disk images from one of the various
micro-distributions (e.g. Trinux) and reboot from a floppy.

It *is* a little bit easier than rebuilding the Linux kernel and some
userland utils from scratch and making a boot/root floppy.

It's *certainly* easier than installing a cross-compile system under
FreeBSD and doing all of the above from there.

> Still and all, I agree that the whole thing needs to get much easier. In the
> short term, I'm after a more modest goal than a first general release. I'm
> after a first release that the EROS community can use to build from.  EROS
> is teetering on the point where I can encourage others to work on the code
> in good conscience.

Who, other than you, is familiar with the EROS code to hack it right
now?  Anyone?

> The networking system, kernel to C conversion are the
> two gating items, with graphics design and administrative interface coming
> shortly thereafter.

Well, I have xenv built now; I can reasonably run EROS on my machine,
assuming it works out of the box, and I think I can cvs update.
Networking would be nice but is not essential.

-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
The Internet stock bubble didn't burst on 1999-11-08.  Hurrah!
<URL:http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/bubble.html>
The power didn't go out on 2000-01-01 either.  :)