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NetBSD To Support Kernel Development In Lua Scripting

Posted by timothy on from the point-of-entry dept.

An anonymous reader writes "NetBSD 7.0 will support the Lua scripting language within its kernel for developing drivers and new sub-systems. A Lua scripting interpreter is being added to the NetBSD kernel along with a kernel API so developers can use this scripting language rather than C for developing new BSD kernel components. Expressed reasons for supporting a scripting language in a kernel were rapid application development, better configuration, and "modifying software written in C is hard for users." In a presentation it was said that Lua in the kernel will let users explore their system in an easy way."

8 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. users? by gTsiros · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "modifying software written in C is hard for users."

    i thought *users* had no business writing device drivers?

    of course if they had said "modifying software written in C is hard for programmers." it would gather a fierce shitstorm.

    --
    Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
    1. Re:users? by MacTO · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Keep in mind that NetBSD users are quite different from Windows/Macintosh/Linux users (at least on average).

      "Hard" may also be a reference to the implementation, rather than the language. Interpreted languages tend to bypass the compile and link part of the development process. This means that interpreted languages are easier to develop with and compiled languages are hard to develop with (at least in some respects). I'd also comment on the arcane nature of C, but I haven't used lua so I don't know if it is any better.

    2. Re:users? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I only have 640 KB you insensitive clod!

  2. Performance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Won't that kill performance?

    I mean that's the reason we still write kernels in C. Every cycle counts..

    1. Re: Performance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      So we use it for performance. Ok I get it now.

  3. Great idea. by Meshugga · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I honestly think that this is a great idea. It's a novel approach to extending a kernel, especially considering NetBSD doesn't have that big of a market share and expressly focusses on supporting as many platforms as possible. Prototyping new features or certain drivers in a portable scripting language may give them a leg up in the functionality aspect of the race.

    Also, LUA is super fast, small, easy to learn, concise and the C API/embedding it is straight forward.

    You may knock it all you want, "because kernel land is C land", but after all bias being said and flamed, this may turn out to be a really fun, interesting and possibly very useful idea.

  4. Tags by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 5, Funny

    Surely this article deserves the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag more than any other this year. And possibly last year too...

  5. Re:Stupid NOT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't know how much Unix/BSD/Linus code you have read or written, but I have been developing core code, Scheduler, MM and Drivers since 1980 and this is a great idea, long overdue.

    The Abstractions are now well understood and most code dos't need to be quick, but safe, putting PRE in kernels will clean up acres of cockamamie code now written in C, most of which just runs at boot time and is then freed. ... there are exceptions, you cant't have the garbage collector running whenever it likes, eg in the middle of an interrupt routine, but managed memory, not C, C++ scoping is the way to stop slow memory leaks.

    Put simply you are an idiot and dont know what you are talking about.

    MFG, omb