[okl4-developer] Platform recommendations

[David Given]

Hello,

I have a potential project in mind that requires me to run user-mode ARM
code on a system with a particular memory layout. I don't need much in
the way of hardware support; a blocking console will do fine, but I *do*
need something that will abstract over all the startup procedures and
MMU nastiness. It occurs to me that L4 ought to do this well, and OKL4
appears to be the best supported L4 variant for ARM.

Does this sound plausible? (If not, any alternatives?) If so, does
anyone know of a combination of OKL4 target architecture and simulation
environment that will Just Work, out of the box? I'm completely new to
L4 and would really appreciate not having to do a platform port as my
very first task!

(I have, for example, seen mailing list posts from someone who is
porting OKL4 to the Goldfish architecture used by Android, which means
it'll run on Android's qemu; and I've seen references that OKL4 will run
on the Neo1973 used by OpenMoko, which means it'll run on *their* qemu.
But neither of these, as far as I know, use stock OKL4 or stock qemu.
I'd much rather go for a simpler solution if there is one.)

Also, how *little* of OKL4 can I get away with? I don't need Wombat, I
don't need Posix, I don't need any device drivers other than a simple
console; the only thing I really want to do is to run single threaded
user code and service software interrupts (that I believe requires
another thread). Can I get away with *just* the Pistachio kernel, or do
I need any more?

-- 
David Given
dg at cowlark.com