Managed Operating Systems
Here is something that caught by surprise. Sharp OS and Cosmos OS are two operating systems written in C#.
That is not something that you traditionally do with managed languages. So far I have had a look at Sharp OS source code, which seems nice, although I am taken aback by the amount of unsafe code that is there. Of course, it is not like there is much choice in the matter.
I was particularly amused by the implementation on inline assembly:
But other pieces of the code are make me feel that I am looking at some... other language:
You can take the kernel out of C, but you can't get the C out of the kernel, I would say.
I took a brief look at the Cosmos code as well, and it is not significantly different. The way both projects go about building kernels with managed languages is to do IL -> assembly translation at some point, and then run that.
Very interesting concept, although one that I have an academic interest at only. At least until they both get a viable TCP/IP stack and I can start using them as embedded systems. Until then, I think that a stripped down Linux + Mono would do the trick fairly well.
Comments
Have you seen the Microsoft Research Singluarity project? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity(operatingsystem)
They're building a very tiny core in C++ but the rest is managed. I'd love to see Microsoft put some serious effort into this. Somebody's going to do it, and like you, I bet it'll be a lightweight Linux distro + Mono.
100% in C# does not mean it's 100%managed, if they use unsafe code..
Anyway, I think there is real interest in having drivers and core os componentes written as managed code... but there is also some inertia :p
WoW!
Inferno (http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/) is a notably old managed, complete, non-toy operating system.
My friend praises it for bytecode system better then in Java/.NET, network transparency, and resource lightness. It's said to run on 2M of memory.
It runs on itself or inside another OS... neat and invented long ago.