4 ms·

I'm a student at Johns Hopkins, and we're using xv6 in our OS course this semester: http://gaming.jhu.edu/~phf/2015/fall/cs318/ http://gaming.jhu.edu/~phf/2015/

I'm a student at Johns Hopkins, and we're using xv6 in our OS course this semester: http://gaming.jhu.edu/~phf/2015/fall/cs318/ http://gaming.jhu.edu/~phf/2015/fall/cs318/ xv6 is pretty awesome for learning, and lecture is generally spent reading through the source code, some of which is...cute. Most of us have the source code printed out. If you're interested in reading the source, this document is well-formated: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2014/xv6/xv6-rev8.pdf https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2014/xv6/xv6-rev8.pdf (and can actually be generated by the Makefile!)

zxexz 11y ago
Northeastern (my school, currently...) uses it as well. A quick search leads me to believe many schools do. Wonderful learning tool. Also fun to try to port to non-x86 :)
- vive-la-liberte 11y ago
  OP article lists a lot of schools using it as well.
sqldba 11y ago
So the ls and make and all those tools; where do they come from? Are they straight compiles using GNU gcc tools etc? I only ask because I have no idea how much is the kernel compared to everything else; and if it has its own custom compiler or whatever.
- zxexz 11y ago
  No, they are minimal versions written for the OS. Here is ls[0] and cat[1]. You can compile with GCC. [0] http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs3650/unix-xv6/HTML/S/64.html http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs3650/unix-xv6/HTML/S/64.html [1] http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs3650/unix-xv6/HTML/S/42.html http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs3650/unix-xv6/HTML/S/42.html
  - userbinator 11y ago
    I wonder if a suitably minimalist C compiler (along the lines of C4[1] or C4x86[2], although perhaps a bit more featured) and/or assembler to go along with it would be a neat idea too - now you can have a complete self-bootstrapping OS which one person can easily understand. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8558822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8558822 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8746054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8746054
  - riquito 11y ago
    By reading `cat`, how come that error messages are printend on standard output and the exit code is always 0? stderr and exit codes are not implemented/used in xv6?
sun_machine 11y ago
I went through my school's version of this class on xv6, and wow, what a trip. After thinking hard and working hard on things I never had a solid grasp on - filesystems, virtual memory, interrupts, multitasking - I now appreciate and understand things going on after a call to fork() or exec(). For my final project I implemented a simple threading library based on the interface that pthread() uses. It's amazing how beautifully simple kernels can be.

zxexz 11y ago

Northeastern (my school, currently...) uses it as well. A quick search leads me to believe many schools do. Wonderful learning tool. Also fun to try to port to non-x86 :)

vive-la-liberte 11y ago
OP article lists a lot of schools using it as well.

sqldba 11y ago

So the ls and make and all those tools; where do they come from? Are they straight compiles using GNU gcc tools etc? I only ask because I have no idea how much is the kernel compared to everything else; and if it has its own custom compiler or whatever.

zxexz 11y ago
No, they are minimal versions written for the OS. Here is ls[0] and cat[1]. You can compile with GCC. [0] http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs3650/unix-xv6/HTML/S/64.html http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs3650/unix-xv6/HTML/S/64.html [1] http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs3650/unix-xv6/HTML/S/42.html http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs3650/unix-xv6/HTML/S/42.html
- userbinator 11y ago
  I wonder if a suitably minimalist C compiler (along the lines of C4[1] or C4x86[2], although perhaps a bit more featured) and/or assembler to go along with it would be a neat idea too - now you can have a complete self-bootstrapping OS which one person can easily understand. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8558822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8558822 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8746054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8746054
- riquito 11y ago
  By reading `cat`, how come that error messages are printend on standard output and the exit code is always 0? stderr and exit codes are not implemented/used in xv6?

sun_machine 11y ago

I went through my school's version of this class on xv6, and wow, what a trip. After thinking hard and working hard on things I never had a solid grasp on - filesystems, virtual memory, interrupts, multitasking - I now appreciate and understand things going on after a call to fork() or exec(). For my final project I implemented a simple threading library based on the interface that pthread() uses. It's amazing how beautifully simple kernels can be.