Re: synching with minios

[Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11 Dec 2012, at 11:59, PALI Gabor Janos <pgj@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 11:37:30AM +0000, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
>> The OCaml runtime doesn't require floating point, but recall that we don't 
>> control what libraries that are linked in to the final kernel binary.
> 
> Perhaps my recollections are wrong, but the runtime uses floating-pointing 
> numbers
> even to operate the garbage collector (see my fix you have even referenced on 
> one
> of the OCaml mailing lists), not speaking of measuring the time as real 
> value, i.e.
> by aid of floating-point numbers.  Because of that my backend actually breaks 
> the
> interface of others.

Yeah, this is in the Gc module.  It's easy to fix, but breaks the ABI as you 
note.

However, as the rest of the system matures, the Gc module is the most likely to
break away and become more specialised for running in 'unikernel' or 'kFreeBSD' 
mode
(for instance, to control how the kernel thread is scheduled, or other 
platform-specific
aspects).

-anil