Re: Kernel Development & Objective-C

Avi Kivity
2007-12-01T20:02:17Z

Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 12:14:16PM +0000, Ben Crowhurst wrote:
>
>> Has Objective-C ever been considered for kernel development?
>>
>
> Doesn't objective C essentially require a runtime to provide a lot of
> the features of the language? If it does (as I suspect) then it is
> totally unsiatable for kernel development.
>
>

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.

>
> Besides the kernel does a wonderful job doing object oriented design
> where apropriate using C without any of the stupidities added by the
> common OO languages

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