kern/99979: Get Ready for Kernel Module in C++

[Oliver Fromme]

Rick C. Petty <rick-freebsd at kiwi-computer.com> wrote:
 > pfgshield-freebsd at yahoo.com wrote:
 > > 
 > > C++ is the de-facto standard for OO
 > 
 > That is just sad.  So many other languages do a much better job of
 > implementing OO (Smalltalk, Java, Python, even Scheme).

That's true.  At OOPSLA '97, Alan Kay (an OO pioneer) said:
"I made up the term 'object-oriented', and I can tell you I
didn't have C++ in mind."

However, none of the languages you mentioned is really well-
suited for FreeBSD kernel development.

Just for the record, there are a lot of C-like languages
that could be used, in theory.  For example Objective-C
(which has a nice, Smalltalk-like OO implementation, and
it is even completely backwards-compatible to C).  Another
neat language is Cyclone ( http://cyclone.thelanguage.org ),
which is intended to be a "safe" dialect of C, because it
prevents buffer overflows, dangling pointer accesses etc.,
and even has modern features such as pattern matching and
type inference, and it even borrowed a few things from C++
(it uses gcc as the backend and is easy to interface with
standard C code).

Note that I do _not_ imply to actually use any of the above
mentioned languages for FreeBSD kernel programming.  Perso-
nally I prefer to stick with plain C.

 > I'm all for making kernel code free of C++ reserved words (although I'd
 > recommend changing "new" to "new_obj", etc. instead of "_new" or similar).
 > This would allow C++ developers to write drivers and such.  But I don't
 > feel there is any benefit to commit C++ code into the "pristine" kernel
 > source.

The biggest problem is that using C++ code in the kernel
would reduce the number of potential maintainers signifi-
cantly.  It would also make debugging more difficult,
especially for non-experts who try to submit useful PRs.
That's a very important point to consider.

Just my 2 cents.

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd
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