From owner-freebsd-current Fri Nov 6 08:28:09 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id IAA20574 for freebsd-current-outgoing; Fri, 6 Nov 1998 08:28:09 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from time.cdrom.com (time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id IAA20512 for ; Fri, 6 Nov 1998 08:28:06 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@time.cdrom.com) Received: from time.cdrom.com (jkh@localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id IAA01606; Fri, 6 Nov 1998 08:28:15 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@time.cdrom.com) To: Chuck Robey cc: Mike Smith , freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ficl In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 06 Nov 1998 06:56:48 EST." Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1998 08:28:14 -0800 Message-ID: <1602.910369694@time.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > I'm watching all your work using ficl with a lot of interest, but I > don't understand the operating environment of programs at that early > stage of boot too well. Is the filesystem available? Can any use be > made of other Unix utils at all? What devices are available? > Obviously, screen input/output is *somewhat* available, right? You can open() files and do read() calls on them; I don't think write() is supported yet. You can't rely on anything outside of the bootstrap unless it can be open()'d and you certainly can't run ordinary unix utilities from it. I'm not sure about devices and filesystems available - that's more of a Mike/Robert question. As far as screen I/O is concerned, you can read characters from the keyboard and you can emit them to the console device. That's your interface. ;) On top of that, one could probably implement a very rudimentary screen I/O library that assumed ANSI compatability or something and get a reasonable curses type environment. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message