Operating System Design, 2nd Edition

Appendix 1 Porting An Operating System

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends upon retentiveness....

— George Santayana

A1.1 Introduction

Throughout the text, we have focused on the interior of an operating system. Chapters present abstractions, discuss design tradeoffs, show how the code fits into a hierarchical organization, and examine implementation details. Chapter 25 examines how a system can be configured to allow the code to run on systems with a variety of peripheral devices.

This appendix examines two larger questions. First, how can an existing operating system be ported to a new hardware platform that differs in some fundamental ways? Second, can an operating system be written in a way that makes porting easier? To answer ...