Coyotos

Coyotos is a capability-based security-focused microkernel operating system being developed by The EROS Group, LLC^[1]. It is a successor to the EROS system that was created at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University. It is no longer under active development.

History

Coyotos is considered by its creators to be an “evolutionary step” ^[2] beyond the EROS operating system, which in turn was derived from KeyKOS, itself coming from GNOSIS (Great New Operating System In the Sky). The primary developer of EROS was Jonathan S. Shapiro, who was also a driving force behind Coyotos and the BitC programming language, before accepting employment with Microsoft.^[3] A more in-depth history is located at History:"The Path to Coyotos". Since mid-2006 the Coyotos developers were working with the developers of GNU Hurd to make Coyotos a suitable microkernel for GNU Hurd. However, progress was slow.

In April 2009, Jonathan Shapiro announced that "Active work on Coyotos stopped several months ago, and is unlikely to resume. I am debating whether to re-license it under BSD, but other than that, I have no current plans to continue the Coyotos work."^[4]

Objectives

While it had many objectives, one of the most interesting was to become the first formally verified operating system. To support this, the Coyotos project concurrently developed a new programming language called BitC and a new compiler called BitCC.

Microkernel

Coyotos uses a microkernel design which “retains the atomicity and pure capability-based design of the EROS system”^[5], but which “introduces a more efficient memory mapping mechanism”. Compare this with the Mach and L4 family of microkernels.

References

External links

• Coyotos web page
• EROS web page
• KeyKOS web page
• Jonathan Shapiro's web page
• BitC web page

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