Quote:
Is there anything you guys really like?
That depends on what you're looking for: general ideas or details of
specific implementations? Inspiration vs, documentation.
My short list of texts that might be of interest, here (assuming you
are primarily interested in software), includes:
- Organick's The MULTICS System (i.e., how to be thorough!)
- McKusick et al.'s The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD
Operating System (i.e., a more modern take on Organick) - McKusick et al.'s The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD
Operating System (i.e., a more modern take on McKusick :>) - Lions' Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition (commentary and
sources for a small/legacy UN*X) - Comer's Operating System Design/XINU, 2 volumes (if you've
never looked under the hood of a traditional/desktop OS) - Tanenbaum's Operating Systems Design and Implementation
(ditto) - Comer's Internetworking with TCP/IP, 2 volumes (if you've never
written a network stack) - Stevens' TCP/IP Illustrated, 3 volumes (if you have!)
- Tanenbaum's Distributed Operating Systems (if you've never
looked into the workings of loosely coupled multiprocessing) - Boykin et al.'s Programming under Mach (if you've never seen a
microkernel) - Foster's Real Time Programming (if you've never considered how
a machine interacts with the WORLD around it -- though the title
always makes me cringe as he has a crippled idea of what constitutes
"real-time")
Of course, there are many other closely related texts -- issues that
are also applicable to OS design (security, cryptography, etc.).
Knuth's "bible" for programming in general. And, his TeXBook series
for thinking about how to document non-trivial pieces of code.
For an idea of a different direction to take with OS's and userlands,
a look through the Inferno documentation (Vita Nuova) can be
enlightening (i.e., not everyone is obsessed with performance; esp
in light of how inexpensive computing resources have become)
Ack! This list could go on and on... let me know when you've finished
those ~10,000 pages...