Осень — традиционное время оживления в стане разработчиков ReactOS.
В своей группе перед хелоуином мы долго «пугали» участников страшными картинками, и каждый раз из-за проблем в дата-центре по совпадению у нас падал сайт. В действительности же мы таким образом представили новейшую разработку — менеджер управления памятью на C++ под кодовым именем Monstera. На данный момент код компонента находится в отдельной одноименной ветке. Новый менеджер позволит избавиться от 90% процентов имеющихся проблем вида "memory could not be read/write" — главной проблемы ReactOS.
A cut from the readme file:
Monstera is a new implementation of a memory manager (along with a cache manager) compatible with the ReactOS kernel at source code level and providing the same binary compatible Native API through a lightweight wrapper.
Monstera is implemented in a subset of C++ programming language. A document
outlining specific restrictions, coding style and other considerations is
available.
Key ideas:
1. Object oriented language for object oriented kernel. When NT was implemented, C++ wasn't that good.
2. Simplicity > optimization. Nowadays we can sacrifice a bit of performance in favor of more robust implementation.
3. Same Native API. Internal implementation and external interfaces are two different things.
4. Don't drift away too much. It's still based on NT architecture, but think of it as if Microsoft Research would decide to reimplement NT in C++ for fun.
Credits:
— ReactOS Portable Systems Group for the code which is used as a base in many places of Monstera.
— Alex Ionescu for his invaluable contribution to the ReactOS kernel.
— Timo Kreuzer, Johannes Anderwald for their C++-in-the-kernel-mode help.
— Amine Khaldi for help with the build environment.
— ReactOS team for their great work.