developersguide:programmingminix [Wiki]

This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong.
====== Programming in MINIX 3 ======

This document covers some of the technical issues about using MINIX 3 and writing
code for it.
=====  How can I learn to program in C?  =====

The first edition of Andy Tanenbaum's //'//Operating Systems Design
and Implementation**// included an //Introduction to C//. Alas, with a much bigger Minix 2.0 there was no room for this in the //**OSDI 2nd ed//'//.  It's also a bit out of date, as
it describes the original version of C (often referred to as "K&amp;R C")
defined in the 1978 first edition of //'//The C Programming
Language//'// by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.  The 1988
second edition describes "ANSI C" or "Standard C" which is the
reference language for implementing POSIX, although the POSIX standard
allows "Common Usage C" using pre-standard features.  After the
**//OSDI 2nd ed.//** text, a copy of ''The C Programming
Language, 2nd ed.'' is the most useful book you can own to
understand or program in Minix.


=====  In addition to C, what else do I need to know to program in the Minix environment?  =====

A classic book is Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike's //'//Unix
Programming Environment//'//, unfortunately now out of print, but
check Amazon.com or other sources of used books.  This book emphasizes
the use of small programs that do parts of large jobs, and suggests
starting with shell scripts, replacing standard commands in the script
with custom C programs as needed until the overall system is able to do
the job at hand well enough.  The same authors' newer book //'//The
Practice of Programming//'// (1999) is also of interest, although
probably not as useful to a beginning programmer. W. Richard Stevens' 
**//Advanced Programming in the UNIX(R) Environment//** is 
another book with a wealth of information about how to use the resources 
provided by a Unix-like environment, but it also is not a beginner's book. 


=====  How about shell script programming?  =====

The Minix shell, **ash**, is similar to **bash**, the standard
shell in most Linux distributions.  A series of articles on 
[[http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-bash/ | Bash by example]] 
is well worth a look, although not everything is applicable to Minix.
If you are willing to buy a big book the **//Unix Power Tools//**
compendium (Shelley Powers, Jerry Peek, and numerous other authors and
contributors) gives lots of hints on using Unix shells and commands and
has several chapters on scripts.  Hint: the current edition of
**//Unix Power Tools//** is the 3rd.  If you find a discounted
2nd edition at 1/3rd of the price you may find this an attractive
bargain.  The information doesn't go stale, and for the Minix
text-based console environment an older reference may be good enough.
=====  How about those strange Makefile?  =====

Since 3.1.7, MINIX3 switched to use the *BSD make system;
besides making the import of *BSD utilities and libraries easier,
it is also the same system as used under the hood in [[.:testingpkgsrc|pkgsrc]].

An advantage of this system are the individual Makefiles, which syntax is much simpler,
since all the complexity is moved into a centralized set of *.mk files
stored in ''/usr/share/mk/''. A typical Makefile looks like
<code>
#	$OpenBSD: Makefile,v 1.3 2007/05/29 18:24:56 ray Exp $

PROG=	diff
SRCS=	diff.c diffdir.c diffreg.c xmalloc.c

.include <bsd.prog.mk>
</code>

For an introduction to BSD make system, including advanced features,
you can read the "tutorial" written by the author, Adam de Boor, for the 4.4BSD system here [[http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/en/books/pmake/]].

=====  I hear a lot about security problems, any hints on secure programming?  =====

Even though at the start you may think that your programs on your
little non-networked Minix system will never be a security threat, it
is a good idea to learn a little bit about secure programming early in
your programming career. 

A useful reference is the [[http://www.dwheeler.com/secure-programs/Secure-Programs-HOWTO/index.html | Secure Programming for Linux and Unix HOWTO]] by David A. Wheeler.


=====  What programming languages and compilers are supported by Minix?  =====

The Minix operating system itself and the various utilities and
programs that are part of the Minix distribution are written in
**C**, and the distribution includes a C compiler.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of languages and compilers available :
  * **C** : **clang** is the default
  * **Fortran** : **f2c** from pkgsrc
  * **Lua** : inherited from NetBSD
  * **Perl** : **perl** from pkgsrc
  * **Python** : **python27** from pkgsrc
  * **Shell** : Bourne Shell is the default

=====  Why is OS support needed for MMX or floating point math?  =====
This answer was extracted from a comment on comp.os.minix:
<code>
From: kjb=733301@cs.vu.nl (Kees J Bot)
Subject: Re: MMX/3DNow support was RE: MINIX Development?
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 20:15:03 +0200

This is really a hardware floating point issue, because the MMX
registers share the FP registers.  This was done so that MMX unaware
OSes can still support MMX programs, because when they save and restore
the FP registers then the MMX state is also saved and restored if that
happens to be what the FP registers are used for.

This saving and restoring is what Minix doesn't do.  So if two processes
use FP/MMX then a context switch from one to the other will clobber the
FP state of both.

What is needed to make this work is a trap handler that reacts to the
use of FP, so that Minix can save the FP state of the process that
last used FP and load the FP state of the current process.  On a context
switch Minix merely sets the "don't use FP" bit in some register.

Costs?  One FP interrupt handler, some FP save/restore/setup code, some
memory per process to store the FP state into, and some memory to store
the FP state when a user process catches a signal.  (Not sure about the
signal business, much check with Philip.)  This isn't much work, we can
simply take Minix-vmd's code, but I haven't seen any need yet.  Minix
has to use software FP as distributed, or it won't run on your old 386,
so Minix itself doesn't need it.

Anyone here who wants to use Minix for some heavy number crunching?  If
so then I could be persuaded to add an ENABLE_FPU to the next release,
by default off.  I don't care about MMX, that's way too exotic for Minix.
</code>

=====  Is there an assembly syntax inconsistency in MINIX?  =====
A: Assembly language files for Minix sometimes use inconsistent syntax. 
The question was discussed in [[http://minix1.woodhull.com/faq/asysyn.html | this exchange on the comp.os.minix newsgroup]]
during May and June, 2004.
User Tools

Site Tools

Page Tools
