HLLs other than C for kernel development?

[mystran]

Now, every once in a while people come an ask if it's possible to write an OS/Kernel in VisualBasic or Delphi or whatever, but I'm wondering what are the real options other than C/C++/Asm and possibly some Pascal variants?

There have been some efforts to write an OS with Java or Scheme or such, but in most cases it seems to mean that there is some library (OSKit most often) that handles the low-level things, and then a VM/interpreter running on top of this to run the HLL code..

Basicly, anything compilable to native code, without special runtime-support and with access to inline (or linked) assembly SHOULD be able to run on top of bare hardware, without any C code. My question is really, do such languages, preferably higher level than C, exist?

Like I've possible mentioned before, I'm currently toying around with a LISP variant that would be compilable to native code. The idea would be that the minimal language core wouldn't need any runtime support, other than what could be written with inline assembly and the extended language could be written in the language itself.

LISP might be too dynamic for this ofcourse, but despite some efforts to research languages, any languages higher level than C seem to require extensive runtime support. Futher, it seems that C is the only commonly used language (other than possibly some variants like C-- or C++ or whatever, and possibly some very similar languages) that can run on it's own..

One language I can immediately think of is Forth and it's variants. Are there others?

[Tim]

Well, you've got Ada, which is being used for AdaOS. Ada seems to lend itself very well to OS development, as it was specifically designed for writing very large, reliable software systems.