Prototype of the device driver generation system for unix-like operating systems

Writing device drivers spends much time and makes efforts because it needs knowledge of the target device and operating system (OS). In order to lighten the burden, the authors have proposed a model to generate device drivers and a device driver generation system before. The system generates a source code of a device driver from three inputs: device driver specification, OS dependent specification, and device dependent specification. The device drivers generated in the model are evolutionary because they can be expanded their features easily. They, however, are not always effective because the burden in describing the device dependent specification, which is one of the inputs, is nearly as same as the traditional method. In this paper, to aim at more reduction of the burden, device drivers are abstracted again, each input is defined afresh, and then a prototype of the system is implemented. As an example of the generation, an interrupt handler of a network device, FreeBSD and Linux as the target OS, and Etherlink XL as the target device are chosen. The OS dependent specification and the device dependent specification can be reused in each OS and device, respectively. As a result, an identical device dependent specification can be applied to the both OSs. The burden in generating new device drivers or porting ones to other OSs can be reduced.