nimkernel

> kernel developers do not allow third party runtimes in the kernel. Even meager Rust's "panic" runtime is a contentious Much in Linux is contentious :-) which is why the module system is nice. A kernel module for C code requires no permission from Linux-core unless you need it distributed with the kernel (which, yes, might be required for "credibility" - but critically also might not). It may require many decls to access various kernel APIs, but those can be (semi-)automated or just done as-needed. So, Linux kernel policy is not so relevant (at best) which is what I meant by "no special support" (admittedly brief). Kernel coding is always a bit trickier, and you may need to build up some support code to make integration nice, though as well as decl generators (though none of that need be distributed "with Linux"). > Can one disable r

Niceness is subjective, but Nim is just as valid an addition to that group. Nim compiles to C and has had an --os=standalone mode for like 10 years from its git history, and as mentioned else-thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36506087) can be used for Linux kernel modules. Multiple people have written "stub OSes" in it (https://github.com/dom96/nimkernel & further along https://github.com/khaledh/axiom). While it can use clang as a backend, Nim does not rely upon LLVM support like Zig or Rust (pre-gcc-rust working). Use on embedded devices is fairly popular: https://forum.nim-lang.org/search?q=embedded (or web search). Latency-wise, for a time, video game programming was a perceived "adoption niche" or maybe "hook" for Nim and games often have stringent frame rendering deadlines. If you are interested in video games, you mi

You can certainly use Nim for kernels. I've created a proof of concept long ago, and things are only improving with ARC fast becoming a great alternative to Nim's GC. https://github.com/dom96/nimkernel

Nim is optionally garbage collected. Most of the standard library opts to use the garbage collector, true, but here's an example of a beginning of a tiny OS kernel in nim[0], that does not. I do not know enough of Zig to compare the complexity, and Nim is indeed not simple. To borrow from the zen of Python, it is complex but not complicated; and most of its complexity is of a kind you can almost entirely ignore until you need it, and when you need it, you're in trouble if your programming language doesn't provide it. e.g. operational transforms, macros, compile time execution. pragmas. [0] https://github.com/dom96/nimkernel

> I considered five possibilities: Java, Python, D, Go, and Rust. It's a pity that people rarely consider Nimrod (especially when it is far more suitable than the first two possibilities). Here is an example for anyone that is interested: https://github.com/dom96/nimkernel

I wrote a little OS dev 'starter' for Nimrod which might interest you: https://github.com/dom96/nimkernel

You can develop an OS with it: https://github.com/dom96/nimkernel