Crazed idea for a project. (0.0.1 is here -check out)

VonGodric · Post by **VonGodric** » Mar 11, 2006 18:02

Another wave of insanity has hit me and now i'm overly excited about an idea what I'm seriously considering to turn into a project.

A DOS "shell" written in FB. Here's my idea:
Multitasking shell/kernel written in FB that can run and execute real exe's (compiled by FB). So sort of an OS that is based on DOS. Is anyone else interested in such thing?

hippy · Post by **hippy** » Mar 11, 2006 18:55

Sounds good to me. I assume there will be some inter-application communications mechanism ?

I have an MS-DOS based TCP/IP server and everytime I want to add another server or access via Serial Port ( ie SLIP / PPP etc ) etc it means altering one horrendously monolithic program ( MS-DOS PowerBasic ). Being able to just write another simple FB App to do the job and have it hook into an internal TCP/IP stack would be superb.

Or I could / should use Linux :-)

VonGodric · Post by **VonGodric** » Mar 11, 2006 19:28

Anyway believe it or not I got a threading library to work on dos version. I think DrV and V1ct0r could implement my library into official FB dos version to support threads natively

Although this library is somewhat still buggy and sometimes needs to call a yealding function to pass to a next thread

Post by **v1ctor** » Mar 11, 2006 19:44

The pthreads DOS port? If it runs for more than 10 secs without crashing, sure :).

I never tested it, or tried to get it to build, i think DrV tried to build it once, no idea.

It would probably fix the DOS port of the gfxlib, and allow timers (with a 55ms resolution though) and other goodies.

VonGodric · Post by **VonGodric** » Mar 11, 2006 20:15

not pthreads -another small lightweight threads library. But it provides all the basics, threads, semaphores, conditions, thread priorities, and some more neat features. I think this should be sufficent to create a simple dos shell :P

Can someone test this on real dos machine? http://fbide.freebasic.net/File/fbthread.exe Works fine on my winxp box. Here's the src of this program

Code: Select all

option explicit
#include "pdmlwp.bi"

dim shared print_limit as lwp_semaphore

sub threadTest1 ( byval usrData as any ptr )
    do
        lwp_wait_semaphore(@print_limit)
            print "a";
        lwp_release_semaphore(@print_limit)
    loop
end sub

sub threadTest2 ( byval usrData as any ptr )
    do
        lwp_wait_semaphore(@print_limit)
            print "b";
        lwp_release_semaphore(@print_limit)
    loop
end sub

sub threadTest3 ( byval usrData as any ptr )
    do
        lwp_wait_semaphore(@print_limit)
            print "c";
        lwp_release_semaphore(@print_limit)
    loop
end sub

sub threadTest4 ( byval usrData as any ptr )
    do
        lwp_wait_semaphore(@print_limit)
            print "d";
        lwp_release_semaphore(@print_limit)
    loop
end sub
    
    dim thread1 as integer
    dim thread2 as integer
    dim thread3 as integer
    dim thread4 as integer
        
    if (lwp_init(0, 1024)) then
        lwp_init_semaphore (@print_limit)        
        thread1 = lwp_spawn(@threadTest1, NULL, 4096, 1)
        thread2 = lwp_spawn(@threadTest2, NULL, 4096, 1)
        thread3 = lwp_spawn(@threadTest3, NULL, 4096, 1)
        thread4 = lwp_spawn(@threadTest4, NULL, 4096, 1)
        
        while inkey$=""

        wend
        
        lwp_kill( thread1 )
        lwp_kill( thread2 )
        lwp_kill( thread3 )
        lwp_kill( thread4 )
        
    end if

MystikShadows · Post by **MystikShadows** » Mar 11, 2006 21:38

I'm interested by this too, a lot :-). great idea for a project

I don't have a DOS machine to test this on, but it worked here on XP Pro and XP Home.

I'll definitaly see where this goes, in a few weeks, I may have a native DOS machine then too....looking into it....then I could perform more tests when needed...i'd like to help too :-)..

Now who here didn't think I'd be interested?? Shame on you LOL...

DrV · Post by **DrV** » Mar 12, 2006 1:29

Works fine on Windows 95 here (at home for spring break, stuck with an old Pentium II :) - very cool.

If you point me at the threading lib you used, I will work on adding it to the DOS port.

D.J.Peters · Post by **D.J.Peters** » Mar 12, 2006 2:52

do you mean this ?
Pre-emptive multithreading library 2.0
ftp://ftp.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current ... lwp20s.zip

Extended version of LWP library
ftp://ftp.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current ... mlwp03.zip

VonGodric · Post by **VonGodric** » Mar 12, 2006 7:59

DRV I'll work on it a bit and then post the src and library for you to use. Links what D.J.Peters gave are right but it needs some hacking to compile and work properly on FB

VonGodric · Post by **VonGodric** » Mar 12, 2006 19:36

Hey guys. First proof of concept is here:

http://fbide.freebasic.net/File/fbos001.rar

It runs two files in a "multitask" mode. very simple, but it works:P

Code: Select all

declare function fbos_Print alias "fbos_Print" ( strMessage as string )

function fbos_main alias "fbos_main" (  ) as integer
    do
        fbos_Print("b")
    loop
end function

is the code of the programs. one prints "a" and other "b"

1000101 · Post by **1000101** » Mar 12, 2006 19:45

How are you handling threading priorities, sleeping, double-locks, etc?

VonGodric · Post by **VonGodric** » Mar 12, 2006 20:23

the higher is priority of the thread the more timeslices it get's.
Sleeping is done via not entering a thread at all for a given time -so there's almost no overhead because of it and on the contrary -if one thread is sleeping others get more time slices. double-locks? I van lock threading if it's needed and run in "single thread mode" until I don't need it anymore.

tunginobi · Post by **tunginobi** » Mar 13, 2006 0:39

But what about deadlocks? Say there are two threads, A and B, and two resources, X and Y. Thread A locks X for exclusive access. At the same time, thread B locks Y for exclusive access. What happens when thread A needs Y, which has been locked, while still having locked X? Thread A needs B to release its lock on Y, but B can only continue after A has released its lock on X.

Deadlock. Any way around it?

VonGodric · Post by **VonGodric** » Mar 13, 2006 8:41

yes I can see the problem. For a time being these situations must be avoided until I figure out how to solve it.

It is possible to check if the resource is locked and based on the result do appropriate action (sleep some milliseconds and try again? and if fails again fire an error or try to handle differently.) usually kernel must be able to run programs and if this kind of situation happens in the client program -then I can't do much about it.

anarky · Post by **anarky** » Mar 13, 2006 13:25

Build a check into the thread library which will trap this and in return, create a fake resource Y and tell the thread to use it then.

I'm in. I'd like to make a FB-based console.

EDIT: Tested on real dos machine, got error: "Load error: no DPMI - Get csdpmi*b.zip"

>anarky