It is really interesting that Gokrazy uses an upstream kernel (with a couple of minor patches).
https://github.com/gokrazy/kernel/blob/3ecdc901da51c2c5b6bf7...
Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances
11–20 of 90 posts
Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
They say it right in the header: "For a long time, we were unhappy with having to care about security issues and Linux distribution maintenance on our various Raspberry Pis."
So it’s like it’s own OS almost? What’s a userland?
Yes, it's pretty much the OS except for the kernel.
Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances
#13Why is Go considered safe?
Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances
#14Why is Go considered safe?
Go is memory-safe. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_safety
Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
They say it right in the header: "For a long time, we were unhappy with having to care about security issues and Linux distribution maintenance on our various Raspberry Pis."
So it’s like it’s own OS almost? What’s a userland?
Userland is the part of the OS that is not the kernel. It is the part you actually interact with.
Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
They say it right in the header: "For a long time, we were unhappy with having to care about security issues and Linux distribution maintenance on our various Raspberry Pis."
So it’s like it’s own OS almost? What’s a userland?
It's everything the kernel doesn't do. In general, that means the surface with which you interact as a user. So if you're used to using a terminal, your SSH connection, your Bash session, are all userland programs (that use kernel features to do things). You can think of it as kernel is a framework like Rails and userland stuff is developers using and expending the interfaces... sort of.
When your computer runs headless, the init/process tree system is userland. Background (cron) jobs are userland, daemons are userland. Etc.
Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances
#17Why is Go considered safe?
Go is memory-safe. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_safety
Are there not many statically typed, compiled languages that ship a runtime with a garbage collector? Why is Go a good choice here?
Why is this choice better than a language that provides memory safety using linear types so you don't even need a runtime or garbage collector?
Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep - for home automation style stuff (which the author seems to have built it for - see the showcase section), having a full Linux distro is actually a real pain. I've taken to building my own stuff with the ESP series of microcontrollers, home made PCBs, etc - once it's built - it just keeps chugging along, unlike my original stuff I built atop RaspberryPis with Linux.
I've done a lot of this sort of this as well. The ESP8266 is so great for simple on/off switches and sensors. But-- there are so many applications for having a full IoT Linux distribution that I can't believe this isn't already a solved problem. I'm imagining an ultra-stable distro that is easy to deploy to a headless machine, handles security updates, handles flaky wi-fi issues, tests the SD card (I've had more than…
Android-things solves this problem at the scale of embedded linux, and mbed solves this problem at the microcontroller level.
Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go is memory-safe. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_safety
Are there not many statically typed, compiled languages that ship a runtime with a garbage collector? Why is Go a good choice here? Why is this choice better than a language that provides memory safety using linear types so you don't even need a runtime or garbage collector?
You can read more about why I like Go at https://michael.stapelberg.de/posts/2017-08-19-golang_favori....
Of course I used my favorite programming language for building gokrazy :).
Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go is memory-safe. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_safety
Are there not many statically typed, compiled languages that ship a runtime with a garbage collector? Why is Go a good choice here? Why is this choice better than a language that provides memory safety using linear types so you don't even need a runtime or garbage collector?
Are there not many statically typed, compiled languages that ship a runtime with a garbage collector?
Not really a huge number, no. Java is probably the most obvious, if you count that as compiled. Maybe Haskell or D? I suppose even Swift of Objective C if you include RC in the definition of GC.
I would say the focus shouldn't be entirely on GC, however. Safety as a whole is the most important factor, and it's possible to be say without GC, as you point out. I reckon Go is actually quite an attractive language for this sort of application regardless – quite safe, quite lightweight, good libraries.