• 6 August 2011: Updated the setup script for ES operating system to build with more up-to-date open source libraries and tools including GCC 4.6.1.
• 1 July 2011: ES Web browser from ES operating system

We are creating a new pure component operating system named ES. This project was started by Shiki Okasaka and Kyu Ueno at Nintendo largely affected by Rob Pike's "Systems Software Research is Irrelevant" talk in 2000. Since 2008, this project has been hosted in Google Code under the copyright of both Google and Nintendo in hope we can reach more people worldwide.

As we realize ECMAScript/Web based applications are becoming very important and useful, ES operating system has been designed to make the Web Apps APIs as the primary operating system interfaces, and to be an extensible operating system by supporting the component technology from the operating system kernel level as originally proposed for the future direction by Noah Mendelsohn in "Operating Systems for Component Software Environments" in 1997.

In ES operating system every system API is defined in Web IDL, a new interface definition language used for defining APIs for Web Apps including HTML5, Web GL, and so forth. New APIs defined in Web IDL can be dynamically added to the system by loading the corresponding new software components running at the user level. With a better security model in the operating system, we should be able to bring better extensibility to the computers and devices connected to the Internet. For example, a web browser could be implemented as a seamless composition of various software components from various companies, communities, and organizations. As the Web is becoming the new platform replacing the traditional operating systems, we believe we will need an extensible operating system like we're studying with ES operating system. A unique part in ES operating system is we are using Web IDL to generate interfaces for C++ not only for ECMAScript and Java, and the software components written in C++ can be seamlessly controlled from ECMAScript.

The project goals include but not limited to:

• a pure component operating system kernel design and development
• a Web IDL based component object binding runtime implementation for C++ and ECMAScript
• The open Web platform components, including an Web browser, development and integration
• a TCP/IP stack implementation based on design pattern

Introduction

• Introduction
• Using the ES operating system

How-tos

• Quick Developer Setup
• Setting up the development environment
• Building the support libraries
• Building the ES operating system
• Building the ES Web browser (1 July 2011)
• Developing ES on a physical machine
• Requesting code review (for GSoC students and contributors)

C++ DOM API

• Web IDL - C++0x binding (28 April 2011)
• C++ DOM API Introduction
• Web IDL - C++ binding

References

• esidl, Web IDL compiler
• The ES operating system's namespace
• ES Coding Style Guideline

Design Documents

• The design of the ES pure component kernel
• The design of the ES operating system's TCP/IP stack

Presentation

• S. Okasaka. ES Operating System from Google Code. The XV Semana Informática do Instituto Superior Técnico, March 12, 2008. (summary, invited talk)
• S. Okasaka and K. Ueno. An Extensible Operating System Architecture Using Reflection. In Proceedings of IPSJ SIG OS, Vol. 2007, No. 10, pp.1-8, 2007. (paper | slide, in Japanese)

Google Summer of Code™ 2009

ES operating system has participated in the Google Summer of Code™ 2009. And three students successfully passed the final evaluation. Our ideas list for GSoC 2009 is here.

Google Summer of Code™ 2008

ES operating system has participated in the Google Summer of Code™ 2008. And two students successfully passed the final evaluation. Our ideas list for GSoC 2008 is here.

Contact Us

Please feel free to post your questions, suggestions, etc., on any topics related to the ES operating system to our discussion group. We always welcome your input.