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I find the Fuchsia Interface Description Language (FIDL) interesting as a concept. It allows components written in different languages to easily cooperate: - L

I find the Fuchsia Interface Description Language (FIDL) interesting as a concept. It allows components written in different languages to easily cooperate: - Language: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/languages/fidl/reference/language.md https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/languages/fidl/r... - Wire-format: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/languages/fidl/reference/wire-format https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/languages/fidl/r... I think it is an underappreciated concept in today's systems, which suffer an epidemic of monolithism, leading to GB-sized installations that do their own variation of.. nothing much.

sansnomme 7y ago
For some reason Fuchsia has always reminded me of Windows. Or at least what Windows would have been had it been built from a clean slate in 2019. The handles etc. have clear Windows analogues and Wire is basically COM.
- dodobirdlord 7y ago
  The wire format seems strongly related to protocol buffers, which is to be expected from a Google project.
  - ithkuil 7y ago
    At Google it's not uncommon to have common code "libraries" actually being separate process exposing a stubby rpc interface (similar to gRPC) over shared memory IPC. It solved several inter-language issues that plagued things like swig and counterintuitively it can also be as fast of even faster than direct cross-language integration.
- loeg 7y ago
  That's probably not a mistake. NT has some really solid design concepts that POSIX missed on.
  - brachi 7y ago
    > NT has some really solid design concepts that POSIX missed Such as...? Genuine question. I was impressed a few years ago when I tried Ubuntu for Windows, but maybe that has nothing to do with the NT design.
    - ithkuil 7y ago
      IO completion ports, for example
pjmlp 7y ago
That is just the next step of AIDL and HIDL from Android. https://developer.android.com/guide/components/aidl https://developer.android.com/guide/components/aidl https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/hidl https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/hidl And it goes back to ideas like DCE and Taligent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Computing_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Computing_Environm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent Also how XPC works on Apple platforms (IDL here are Objective-C protocols). https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/Chapters/CreatingXPCServices.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ma...
- niftich 7y ago
  The 'Pink' of the phrase "Pink + Purple == Fuchsia" is a reference to Taligent's Pink, and 'Purple' appears [1] to be a reference to 'Project Purple', the effort at Apple that culminated in the release of the iPhone. [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/a-modern-os-from-google https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/a-mod...
- mda 7y ago
  Fidl is the direct evolution of Mojo https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/mojo/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/mojo...

sansnomme 7y ago

For some reason Fuchsia has always reminded me of Windows. Or at least what Windows would have been had it been built from a clean slate in 2019. The handles etc. have clear Windows analogues and Wire is basically COM.

dodobirdlord 7y ago
The wire format seems strongly related to protocol buffers, which is to be expected from a Google project.
- ithkuil 7y ago
  At Google it's not uncommon to have common code "libraries" actually being separate process exposing a stubby rpc interface (similar to gRPC) over shared memory IPC. It solved several inter-language issues that plagued things like swig and counterintuitively it can also be as fast of even faster than direct cross-language integration.
loeg 7y ago
That's probably not a mistake. NT has some really solid design concepts that POSIX missed on.
- brachi 7y ago
  > NT has some really solid design concepts that POSIX missed Such as...? Genuine question. I was impressed a few years ago when I tried Ubuntu for Windows, but maybe that has nothing to do with the NT design.
  - ithkuil 7y ago
    IO completion ports, for example

pjmlp 7y ago

That is just the next step of AIDL and HIDL from Android. https://developer.android.com/guide/components/aidl https://developer.android.com/guide/components/aidl https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/hidl https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/hidl And it goes back to ideas like DCE and Taligent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Computing_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Computing_Environm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent Also how XPC works on Apple platforms (IDL here are Objective-C protocols). https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/Chapters/CreatingXPCServices.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ma...

niftich 7y ago
The 'Pink' of the phrase "Pink + Purple == Fuchsia" is a reference to Taligent's Pink, and 'Purple' appears [1] to be a reference to 'Project Purple', the effort at Apple that culminated in the release of the iPhone. [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/a-modern-os-from-google https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/a-mod...
mda 7y ago
Fidl is the direct evolution of Mojo https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/mojo/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/mojo...