World: r3wp

It should be possible to run some version in some emulator, but I 
haven't done it yet. We've only had Bochs running in the past. We're 
still having some problems porting QEmu, but we're looking into it

SDL is now fully functional in Syllable, so porting emulators should 
be much easier now

RKMs?

hehe... I guess that answers my question ;-)

so you just put an amiga skin over linux kernel then?

Our project leader would know what they are, but I only collect Amiga's 
:-)

Rom Kernel Manuals... the official Amiga Bible.

No. Look ma, no Linux kernel! The whole system is our own. We only 
use ported Linux and XFree drivers

ok, so does the OS API mimic those from the Amiga?  (and would thus 
allow easier port of old Amiga sources)

I have those manuals here somewhere, but... Only AtheOS version 1 
was meant as an Amiga clone, eons ago. It was rewritten three times 
to become its own operating system. Only the general Amiga spirit 
remains - with the BeOS spirit on top of it

k

Someone should port UAE one of these days

would that be like incest  ;-)

Since AROS can run hosted, it would be thinkable to port it to Syllable, 
maybe even with deeper integration

Those are interesting possibilities, but it's not a focus of ours

are you going to devcon?

We're only three or five people. Creating an operating system is 
a bit of a... tall order

I would like to go, but I'm afraid I will be too busy this year

I think that you could have a nice private talk with Carl... since 
you have all the reasons to port R3, I think it would be a good use 
case for Carl to make sure the whole design doesn't assume linux 
windows or Mac

ah well.

does syllable only run on x86?  or could it be retargetted on efika 
boards, for example?

Don't worry. I already did that a year and a half ago in Milan :-)

:-)

x86 only now, but it should be easy to port. It's just that porting 
is hard in itself, so all the people who have claimed that they were 
going to do it over the weekend have never been heard from again 
:-)

I can understand the H/W driver part being a nightmare.  timing and 
resource sharing is not trivial.

It's almost all C, with just a few fragments of assembler. The drivers 
are from Linux and X, so if you go back to the original versions, 
they're portable

ok, as long as they are also available for the other HW, I see... 
good practice  :-)

It's just that it's a deeply technical procedure with many steps, 
so few people are capable of it, and everyone would have to learn 
along the way

yes obviously.

The easiest and most useful port would be to AMD64, so when we get 
to it, we will focus on that first

Over the years I've already done work on cross-compiling toolchains

is syllable able to compile itself?

Since time immemorial. That's how we got AtheOS from Kurt, and it 
has been a huge advantage

We don't cross-develop such as almost all other alternative systems. 
We develop on Syllable itself, so we have always been at a relatively 
low bug level

using your own stuff always improves its quality.  the nasty things 
get fixed fast... they annoy you the first  :-)

With the cross-compiling toolchain, we could develop for Linux on 
Syllable :-)

Exactly

does Orca support AGG dialect?

In fact, I use my Syllable build system on Linux to build the ORCA 
and GrUB packages for Linux

No, ORCA is still very basic. It has bindings for BZip2, but nothing 
else yet

We don't have an AGG port yet for Syllable, either, but I hear it 
just compiles. Integration is another story, though

if porting of R3 is possible and works out in the end... would you 
consider dropping ORCA just for the fact that you would have access 
to much more applications from day one?  and since you can adapt 
and extend it from the inside (per the info so far), you could still 
add your own custom native flavor to it...

We would include both. Our strategy for survival is to be open source, 
so we can't make the system dependent on closed parts. But, at least 
in our project, we can put closed stuff on top of it

So we use ORCA in the base system to increase the level of REBOL, 
and we could run REBOL 3 applications on top

You see that it's important to us that ORCA is REBOL compatible, 
so the two layers can communicate

i see

do you have an image of this biuld  to use with VMPlayer yet ?

Yes, from now on we're building the VMWare image ourselves. It's 
among the download files

It can also be used in many other emulators

thanks