Effectiveness of operating system prototyping from a template: application to MINIX

In a previous paper, M. Archer et al. (1990) presented a tool for the rapid prototyping of operating systems based on an executable template operating system specification. By extending the template specification, a designer can generate a rapid prototype of a specific operating system. The template specification consists of sorts (object classes) arranged in a hierarchy of three kinds, where the design decisions made in the template for each kind are in some sense more general than those made for its successor kind. The FASE (final algebra specification and execution) system language was used as the language for the specification. It is the authors´ belief that the SRM template is general enough to be used as a basis for rapid prototyping nearly any non-distributed operating system at the system call level. It is important to test this belief, and to show that the speed of prototype development and the execution speed of a rapid prototype are great enough for the development of a prototype to be useful for testing the properties of a design. The authors answer these questions, demonstrate the usefulness of having a rapid prototype of an operating system, and evaluate the template methodology in general