Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 11:53:47 -0500
To: Avi Kivity <avi@argo.co.il>
Cc: Ben Crowhurst <Ben.Crowhurst@stellatravel.co.uk>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Kernel Development & Objective-C
Message-ID: <20071203165347.GJ2308@csclub.uwaterloo.ca>
References: <474EAD18.6040408@stellatravel.co.uk> <20071130143445.GA2310@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <4751BD23.7020104@argo.co.il>
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From: lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Lennart Sorensen)
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On Sat, Dec 01, 2007 at 09:59:31PM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote:
> C also requires a (very minimal) runtime. And I don't see how having a 
> runtime disqualifies a language from being usable in a kernel; the 
> runtime is just one more library, either supplied by the compiler or by 
> the kernel.

Well the majority of C syntax requires no runtime library.  There are
some system call like things that you often want that need a library
(like malloc and such), but those aren't really part of C itself.  Of
course without malloc and printf and file i/o calls the program would
probably be a bit boring.  I have written some small C programs without
a runtime, where the few things I needed where implemented in assembly
and poked the hardware directly and called from the C program.

> Object orientation in C leaves much to be desired; see the huge number 
> of void pointers and container_of()s in the kernel.

As a programming language, C leaves much to be desired.

--
Len Sorensen
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