[Microkernel-devroom] Devrooms for 2012

[Norman Feske]

Hello,

I like your suggestions and I agree with Martin that we should always
try to ignite the interest of visitors that come by to look what is
going on. If I image stumbling into a room of people working on crazy
stuff that I'm not familiar with, I'd like to see two things: A way to
quickly find out whether this room is of interest to me and worth to
stay, and a hook to get somehow involved with the scene.

I don't know exactly how to achieve both but one thing that I would find
attractive is some toy to play with, e.g., a running microkernel-based
OS, an interactive demo - something that is fun to explore. Maybe we
could dedicate one corner of the room to get people hooked?

For the technical parts geared more towards developers like ourself, I'm
very interested in exploring the different technologies and learn about
the people and motivations behind them. So the introductory talk for
each project as suggested by Jakub makes much sense.

In addition, I see many technical challenges that each of our projects
more or less have to deal with.

For example, I could imagine to give an informal talk about our
experiences with using C++ as implementation language, in particular
about the troubles we experienced and the benefits gained from this
approach - things like replacing an IDL compiler by C++ templates.

I would love to hear HelenOS' experiences with implementing a custom
TCP/IP stack. What was the reason for this decision and has it paid off
in hindsight?

Also, I see that there is activity going on to get HelenOS self-hosting
- a goal that Genode also pursues. However, I think the approaches taken
are pretty different and I would appreciate getting insights into the
respective developments.

An ever-lasting topic is user-level device drivers. With Genode, we went
a pretty long-winded route including the use of the DDE-approach, custom
drivers, and device-driver OSes. Maybe these experiences are worth sharing?

These are just four topics from the top of my head. I am sure that
everyone of us has some story worth telling. :-)

> - panel discussion about interesting topics of the day; the projects can
> put together their specific list (one or two items each) of what's hot
> in their world and bring it to the panel discussion (ideally preceded by
> some form of introduction if needed)

That is a very good idea and maybe also a chance to discuss ways to work
more closely together in the future.

> - not sure if there will be any public, but if there is, we can have
> Q&A's session with the public

I don't think there will be much public demand of a scheduled Q&A
session. In my opinion, the topic is both too much of a niche (to most
people, microkernel-based OSes are just obscure) and at the same time
too broad.

> - coding session; the developers prepare something small enough which
> can be put together in the timeframe of a couple hours; before the
> coding session starts, everyone has a chance to briefly say what he
> would like to do; would be interesting to see other projects at work and
> also meet and work with people from own project who we know only from
> over e-mail

Great idea!

Cheers
Norman