Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 1st Jan 2008 21:50 UTC, submitted by William Lahti
.NET (dotGNU too) SharpOS 0.0.1 has been released. "The SharpOS project is aimed at writing an operating system in 100% C#. This originally proved to be a problem of nearly philosophical proportions because C# is a managed language, and by nature isn't designed for such low-level uses as developing an operating system kernel. Please note that although our goal is to create an operating system in C#, the infrastructure we have created allows kernels to be written in any language that targets the Common Intermediate Language bytecodes and exposes pointers and unsafe code."
Thread beginning with comment 293983
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Very cool!
by suryad on Tue 1st Jan 2008 22:56 UTC
suryad
Member since:
2005-07-09

Being a geek this project totally appeals to me. I wonder what happened to the OS that was supposed to be written in Java...I would like to know though isnt this something that Microsoft already attempted through Singularity?

RE: Very cool!
by Aaron1 on Tue 1st Jan 2008 23:48 in reply to "Very cool!"
Aaron1 Member since:
2006-01-19

Java OS: http://jnode.org/

I think the focus of Singularity was to create a more reliable OS by stronger isolation of processes. I'm sure it's much more complicated than that.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 3

RE: Very cool!
by Nelson on Tue 1st Jan 2008 23:50 in reply to "Very cool!"
Nelson Member since:
2005-11-29

Yes, and Singularity is much more advanced and has many different areas of research being made in it.

Writing a Managed Kernel is only the beginning, there is a much greater potential for a rich experience. It's still an area of active research, so it's pretty neat that these guys were able to at the very least boot a kernel written in C#.

Now, according to my reading the kernel isn't managed per-say, it seems like they translate the IL to x86 and execute that. It doesn't bring the benefits of managed code.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

RE[2]: Very cool!
by fury on Wed 2nd Jan 2008 00:46 in reply to "RE: Very cool!"
fury Member since:
2005-09-23

Now, according to my reading the kernel isn't managed per-say, it seems like they translate the IL to x86 and execute that. It doesn't bring the benefits of managed code.


For now, yes, managed code is not actually supported, but that is our goal. As you can imagine, doing the project the way we are doing it does not lend to expedient development at least for this early stage. Our next milestone focuses on implementing object support and all the things that that entails.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 4

RE[2]: Very cool!
by mrminnman on Wed 2nd Jan 2008 03:10 in reply to "RE: Very cool!"
mrminnman Member since:
2006-06-27

"It doesn't bring the benefits of managed code."

Did I miss the point of Singularity? i.e. that the IL can be analyzed and given a safety rating. i.e. if the IL never dereferences pointers itself and uses safe API's, then the driver, etc..., can be labeled safe.

there are a lot of other nice things that can happen too....

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 1

RE: Very cool!
by fury on Wed 2nd Jan 2008 00:50 in reply to "Very cool!"
fury Member since:
2005-09-23

Being a geek this project totally appeals to me. I wonder what happened to the OS that was supposed to be written in Java...I would like to know though isnt this something that Microsoft already attempted through Singularity?


Thank you for your interest! Yes, Singularity is similar to SharpOS, but unfortunately Singularity is not open source (or shared source for that matter), and it also makes use of a runtime written in a non-CLR language. They also created a special version of C# for the project. We are free software, and we strive to use tools/languages that are already mature and freely available.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 7

v RE[2]: Very cool!
by Almafeta on Wed 2nd Jan 2008 06:00 in reply to "RE: Very cool!"
RE[2]: Very cool!
by ebasconp on Wed 2nd Jan 2008 19:01 in reply to "RE: Very cool!"
ebasconp Member since:
2006-05-09

Kudos for your fascinating work!

I have a question... (not politics, please) Why did you choose C# instead of Java [technically, they both provides similar features and architecture] (and Java is getting open)?

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

RE[2]: Very cool!
by andrewg on Thu 3rd Jan 2008 14:05 in reply to "RE: Very cool!"
andrewg Member since:
2005-07-06

Except that Singularity and SharpOS are not that similar. The only thing they have in common are the CLR and C# except Singularity is written in Singh# which is C# with extensions that make writing OS's in C# possible.

The architecture is different. The three things that stand out are:

- Software Isolated Processes (SIP)
- Contract based Channels
- Manifest Based programs

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2