• Contact: tech-kern
• Mentors: Antti Kantee, Adam Hamsik
• Duration estimate: 3 months

System interfaces are currently specified as C prototypes, C preprocessor macros and C structures. This limits the ability to do automatic processing with them. There are some cases in the tree which implement an ad-hoc domain specific language and a script producing a C representation of the data, for example vnode_if.src and namei.src.

The goal of the project is to come up with a specification language and test it by rewriting a considerable subset of the current C headers in it. A translator for generating the C representations and documentation should also be implemented. Finally, the student should suggest and implement any other use for the translator. An example is autogenerating code to print structures in a human-readable form from the ddb kernel debugger.

This is more of a research project than a simple implementation. The goals are very loosely set now, but should be exactly specified by the student in the application.

For honors, a static analyzer examining if calls are made with the correct type of flag arguments can be written as the third requirement. It would warn about for example malloc(s, M_TEMP, PR_WAITOK);.