[TUHS] Pipes (was Re: After 50 years, what has the Impact

[David Arnold]

> On 7 Dec 2024, at 11:53, Martin Schröder <martin at oneiros.de> wrote:
> 
> Am Fr., 6. Dez. 2024 um 23:07 Uhr schrieb Steve Simon <steve at quintile.net>:
>> helios supported DAG shell syntax.
> 
> Wikipedia:
> "What is not immediately apparent is that Helios extends the notion of
> Unix pipes into a language called Component Distribution Language
> (CDL).

I have somewhere the CDL reference: a small volume, perhaps 50 pages.

If I recall correctly, there’s some discussion in the two Helios books as well.   I can dig them up if there’s interest. 

<…>

>> helios was a unix style os (was it actually posix compliant?) for networks of transputers.
> 
> Mostly.

I think it was missing fork(), although I believe it had a vfork().

It was able to run a lot of the free software of the time with a little effort.  There was a GCC port, gnumake, MicroEmacs, X11R4 (? Maybe R5?)

It was an interesting OS. Not unlike Plan9: its file server protocol is roughly analogous to 9p.




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