Genode Operating System Framework Foundations

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Genode Operating System Framework Foundations GENODE Operating System Framework 15.05 Foundations Norman Feske Contents Contents 1. Introduction9 1.1. Operating-system framework......................... 14 1.2. Licensing and commercial support...................... 16 1.3. About this document.............................. 17 I. Foundations 18 2. Getting started 19 2.1. Obtaining the source code........................... 20 2.2. Source-tree structure.............................. 21 2.3. Using the build system............................. 24 2.4. A simple system scenario........................... 26 2.5. Hello world................................... 29 2.5.1. Using a custom source-code repository............... 29 2.5.2. Source code and build description.................. 29 2.5.3. Building the component........................ 30 2.5.4. Defining a system scenario...................... 31 3. Architecture 33 3.1. Capability-based security........................... 35 3.1.1. Capability spaces, object identities, and RPC objects........ 35 3.1.2. Delegation of authority and ownership............... 36 3.1.3. Capability invocation......................... 37 3.1.4. Capability delegation through capability invocation........ 40 3.2. Recursive system structure........................... 42 3.2.1. Component ownership......................... 42 3.2.2. Tree of components........................... 43 3.2.3. Services and sessions.......................... 43 3.2.4. Client-server relationship....................... 46 3.3. Resource trading................................ 50 3.3.1. Resource assignment.......................... 50 3.3.2. Trading memory between clients and servers............ 54 3.3.3. Component-local heap partitioning................. 56 3.3.4. Dynamic resource balancing..................... 58 3.4. Core - the root of the component tree..................... 60 3.4.1. Dataspaces................................ 60 3.4.2. Physical memory allocation (RAM)................. 61 3.4.3. Access to boot modules (ROM).................... 61 3.4.4. Protection domains (PD)........................ 62 2 Contents 3.4.5. Address-space management (RM).................. 62 3.4.6. Processing-time allocation (CPU)................... 64 3.4.7. Object-identity allocation (CAP)................... 64 3.4.8. Access to device resources (IO_MEM, IO_PORT, IRQ)....... 64 3.4.9. Logging (LOG)............................. 66 3.4.10. Asynchronous notifications (SIGNAL)................ 66 3.4.11. Event tracing (TRACE)......................... 66 3.5. Component creation.............................. 67 3.5.1. Obtaining the child’s ROM and RAM sessions........... 67 3.5.2. Constructing the child’s address space................ 68 3.5.3. Creating the initial thread and the child’s protection domain... 70 3.6. Inter-component communication....................... 73 3.6.1. Synchronous remote procedure calls (RPC)............. 74 3.6.2. Asynchronous notifications...................... 82 3.6.3. Shared memory............................. 85 3.6.4. Asynchronous state propagation................... 87 3.6.5. Synchronous bulk transfer....................... 87 3.6.6. Asynchronous bulk transfer - packet streams............ 89 4. Components 92 4.1. Device drivers.................................. 94 4.1.1. Platform driver............................. 95 4.1.2. Interrupt handling........................... 96 4.1.3. Direct memory access (DMA) transactions............. 96 4.2. Protocol stacks.................................. 100 4.3. Resource multiplexers............................. 102 4.4. Runtime environments and applications................... 104 4.5. Common session interfaces.......................... 106 4.5.1. Read-only memory (ROM)...................... 106 4.5.2. Report.................................. 108 4.5.3. Terminal and UART.......................... 108 4.5.4. Input................................... 109 4.5.5. Framebuffer............................... 110 4.5.6. Nitpicker GUI.............................. 112 4.5.7. Platform................................. 113 4.5.8. Block................................... 113 4.5.9. Regulator................................ 113 4.5.10. Timer................................... 113 4.5.11. NIC.................................... 114 4.5.12. Audio output.............................. 114 4.5.13. File system................................ 117 4.5.14. Loader.................................. 118 3 Contents 4.6. Component configuration........................... 119 4.6.1. Configuration format.......................... 119 4.6.2. Server-side policy selection...................... 119 4.6.3. Dynamic component reconfiguration at runtime.......... 120 4.7. Component composition............................ 121 4.7.1. Sandboxing............................... 121 4.7.2. Component-level and OS-level virtualization............ 123 4.7.3. Interposing individual services.................... 127 4.7.4. Ceding the parenthood........................ 128 4.7.5. Publishing and subscribing...................... 130 4.7.6. Enslaving services........................... 132 5. Development 134 5.1. Source-code repositories............................ 135 5.2. Integration of 3rd-party software....................... 137 5.3. Build system................................... 138 5.3.1. Build directories............................ 138 5.3.2. Target descriptions........................... 139 5.3.3. Library descriptions.......................... 140 5.3.4. Platform specifications......................... 141 5.3.5. Building tools to be executed on the host platform......... 142 5.3.6. Building 3rd-party software...................... 142 5.4. System integration and automated testing.................. 144 5.4.1. Run tool................................. 144 5.4.2. Run-tool configuration examples................... 145 5.4.3. Meaningful default behaviour.................... 147 5.4.4. Run scripts............................... 147 5.4.5. The run mechanism explained.................... 148 5.4.6. Using run scripts to implement test cases.............. 149 5.4.7. Automated testing across base platforms.............. 150 5.5. Git flow...................................... 151 5.5.1. Master and staging........................... 151 5.5.2. Development practice......................... 152 6. System configuration 155 6.1. Nested configuration concept......................... 157 6.2. The init component............................... 160 6.2.1. Session routing............................. 160 6.2.2. Resource quota saturation....................... 163 6.2.3. Handing out slack resources..................... 163 6.2.4. Multiple instantiation of a single ELF binary............ 163 6.2.5. Nested configuration.......................... 164 4 Contents 6.2.6. Assigning subsystems to CPUs.................... 166 6.2.7. Priority support............................. 167 6.2.8. Init verbosity.............................. 167 6.2.9. Executing children in chroot environments on Linux....... 167 7. Under the hood 169 7.1. Component-local startup code and linker scripts.............. 170 7.1.1. Linker scripts.............................. 170 7.1.2. Startup code............................... 171 7.2. C++ runtime................................... 175 7.2.1. Rationale behind using exceptions.................. 175 7.2.2. Bare-metal C++ runtime........................ 177 7.3. Interaction of core with the underlying kernel................ 178 7.3.1. Bootstrapping and allocator setup.................. 178 7.3.2. Kernel-object creation......................... 179 7.3.3. Page-fault handling.......................... 180 7.4. Asynchronous notification mechanism.................... 182 7.5. Dynamic linker................................. 185 7.5.1. Building dynamically-linked programs............... 185 7.5.2. Startup of dynamically-linked programs.............. 185 7.5.3. Address-space management..................... 186 7.6. Execution on bare hardware (base-hw).................... 187 7.6.1. Bootstrapping of base-hw....................... 187 7.6.2. Kernel entry and exit.......................... 189 7.6.3. Interrupt handling and preemptive multi-threading........ 189 7.6.4. Split kernel interface.......................... 189 7.6.5. Public part of the kernel interface................... 190 7.6.6. Core-private part of the kernel interface............... 191 7.6.7. Scheduler of the base-hw kernel................... 192 7.6.8. Sparsely populated core address space............... 193 7.6.9. Multi-processor support of base-hw................. 193 7.6.10. Asynchronous notifications on base-hw............... 194 7.7. Execution on the NOVA microhypervisor (base-nova)........... 195 7.7.1. Integration of NOVA with Genode.................. 195 7.7.2. Bootstrapping of a NOVA-based system............... 195 7.7.3. Log output on modern PC hardware................. 196 7.7.4. Relation of NOVA’s kernel objects to Genode’s core services... 197 7.7.5. Page-fault handling on NOVA.................... 198 7.7.6. Asynchronous notifications on NOVA................ 199 7.7.7. IOMMU support............................ 200 7.7.8. Genode-specific modifications of the NOVA kernel........ 201 7.7.9. Known limitations of NOVA..................... 203 5 Contents II. Reference 205 8. Functional specification 206 8.1. API primitives.................................. 208 8.1.1. Capability types............................ 208 8.1.2. Sessions and connections....................... 210 8.1.3. Dataspace interface........................... 213 8.2. Component
Recommended publications
  • A Programmable Microkernel for Real-Time Systems∗
    A Programmable Microkernel for Real-Time Systems∗ Christoph M. Kirsch Marco A.A. Sanvido Thomas A. Henzinger University of Salzburg VMWare Inc. EPFL and UC Berkeley [email protected] tah@epfl.ch ABSTRACT Categories and Subject Descriptors We present a new software system architecture for the im- D.4.7 [Operating Systems]: Organization and Design— plementation of hard real-time applications. The core of the Real-time systems and embedded systems system is a microkernel whose reactivity (interrupt handling as in synchronous reactive programs) and proactivity (task General Terms scheduling as in traditional RTOSs) are fully programma- Languages ble. The microkernel, which we implemented on a Strong- ARM processor, consists of two interacting domain-specific Keywords virtual machines, a reactive E (Embedded) machine and a proactive S (Scheduling) machine. The microkernel code (or Real Time, Operating System, Virtual Machine microcode) that runs on the microkernel is partitioned into E and S code. E code manages the interaction of the system 1. INTRODUCTION with the physical environment: the execution of E code is In [9], we advocated the E (Embedded) machine as a triggered by environment interrupts, which signal external portable target for compiling hard real-time code, and in- events such as the arrival of a message or sensor value, and it troduced, in [11], the S (Scheduling) machine as a universal releases application tasks to the S machine. S code manages target for generating schedules according to arbitrary and the interaction of the system with the processor: the exe- possibly non-trivial strategies such as nonpreemptive and cution of S code is triggered by hardware interrupts, which multiprocessor scheduling.
    [Show full text]
  • The Design of the EMPS Multiprocessor Executive for Distributed Computing
    The design of the EMPS multiprocessor executive for distributed computing Citation for published version (APA): van Dijk, G. J. W. (1993). The design of the EMPS multiprocessor executive for distributed computing. Technische Universiteit Eindhoven. https://doi.org/10.6100/IR393185 DOI: 10.6100/IR393185 Document status and date: Published: 01/01/1993 Document Version: Publisher’s PDF, also known as Version of Record (includes final page, issue and volume numbers) Please check the document version of this publication: • A submitted manuscript is the version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website. • The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review. • The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers. Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 1. Origins of Mac OS X
    1 Chapter 1. Origins of Mac OS X "Most ideas come from previous ideas." Alan Curtis Kay The Mac OS X operating system represents a rather successful coming together of paradigms, ideologies, and technologies that have often resisted each other in the past. A good example is the cordial relationship that exists between the command-line and graphical interfaces in Mac OS X. The system is a result of the trials and tribulations of Apple and NeXT, as well as their user and developer communities. Mac OS X exemplifies how a capable system can result from the direct or indirect efforts of corporations, academic and research communities, the Open Source and Free Software movements, and, of course, individuals. Apple has been around since 1976, and many accounts of its history have been told. If the story of Apple as a company is fascinating, so is the technical history of Apple's operating systems. In this chapter,[1] we will trace the history of Mac OS X, discussing several technologies whose confluence eventually led to the modern-day Apple operating system. [1] This book's accompanying web site (www.osxbook.com) provides a more detailed technical history of all of Apple's operating systems. 1 2 2 1 1.1. Apple's Quest for the[2] Operating System [2] Whereas the word "the" is used here to designate prominence and desirability, it is an interesting coincidence that "THE" was the name of a multiprogramming system described by Edsger W. Dijkstra in a 1968 paper. It was March 1988. The Macintosh had been around for four years.
    [Show full text]
  • Improving Learning of Programming Through E-Learning by Using Asynchronous Virtual Pair Programming
    Improving Learning of Programming Through E-Learning by Using Asynchronous Virtual Pair Programming Abdullah Mohd ZIN Department of Industrial Computing Faculty of Information Science and Technology National University of Malaysia Bangi, MALAYSIA Sufian IDRIS Department of Computer Science Faculty of Information Science and Technology National University of Malaysia Bangi, MALAYSIA Nantha Kumar SUBRAMANIAM Open University Malaysia (OUM) Faculty of Information Technology and Multimedia Communication Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA ABSTRACT The problem of learning programming subjects, especially through distance learning and E-Learning, has been widely reported in literatures. Many attempts have been made to solve these problems. This has led to many new approaches in the techniques of learning of programming. One of the approaches that have been proposed is the use of virtual pair programming (VPP). Most of the studies about VPP in distance learning or e-learning environment focus on the use of the synchronous mode of collaboration between learners. Not much research have been done about asynchronous VPP. This paper describes how we have implemented VPP and a research that has been carried out to study the effectiveness of asynchronous VPP for learning of programming. In particular, this research study the effectiveness of asynchronous VPP in the learning of object-oriented programming among students at Open University Malaysia (OUM). The result of the research has shown that most of the learners have given positive feedback, indicating that they are happy with the use of asynchronous VPP. At the same time, learners did recommend some extra features that could be added in making asynchronous VPP more enjoyable. Keywords: Pair-programming; Virtual Pair-programming; Object Oriented Programming INTRODUCTION Delivering program of Information Technology through distance learning or E- Learning is indeed a very challenging task.
    [Show full text]
  • The Joe-E Language Specification (Draft)
    The Joe-E Language Specification (draft) Adrian Mettler David Wagner famettler,[email protected] February 3, 2008 Disclaimer: This is a draft version of the Joe-E specification, and is subject to change. Sections 5 - 7 mention some (but not all) of the aspects of the Joe-E language that are future work or current works in progress. 1 Introduction We describe the Joe-E language, a capability-based subset of Java intended to make it easier to build secure systems. The goal of object capability languages is to support the Principle of Least Authority (POLA), so that each object naturally receives the least privilege (i.e., least authority) needed to do its job. Thus, we hope that Joe-E will support secure programming while remaining familiar to Java programmers everywhere. 2 Goals We have several goals for the Joe-E language: • Be familiar to Java programmers. To minimize the barriers to adoption of Joe-E, the syntax and semantics of Joe-E should be familiar to Java programmers. We also want Joe-E programmers to be able to use all of their existing tools for editing, compiling, executing, debugging, profiling, and reasoning about Java code. We accomplish this by defining Joe-E as a subset of Java. In general: Subsetting Principle: Any valid Joe-E program should also be a valid Java program, with identical semantics. This preserves the semantics Java programmers will expect, which are critical to keeping the adoption costs manageable. Also, it means all of today's Java tools (IDEs, debuggers, profilers, static analyzers, theorem provers, etc.) will apply to Joe-E code.
    [Show full text]
  • Research Purpose Operating Systems – a Wide Survey
    GESJ: Computer Science and Telecommunications 2010|No.3(26) ISSN 1512-1232 RESEARCH PURPOSE OPERATING SYSTEMS – A WIDE SURVEY Pinaki Chakraborty School of Computer and Systems Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi – 110067, India. E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Operating systems constitute a class of vital software. A plethora of operating systems, of different types and developed by different manufacturers over the years, are available now. This paper concentrates on research purpose operating systems because many of them have high technological significance and they have been vividly documented in the research literature. Thirty-four academic and research purpose operating systems have been briefly reviewed in this paper. It was observed that the microkernel based architecture is being used widely to design research purpose operating systems. It was also noticed that object oriented operating systems are emerging as a promising option. Hence, the paper concludes by suggesting a study of the scope of microkernel based object oriented operating systems. Keywords: Operating system, research purpose operating system, object oriented operating system, microkernel 1. Introduction An operating system is a software that manages all the resources of a computer, both hardware and software, and provides an environment in which a user can execute programs in a convenient and efficient manner [1]. However, the principles and concepts used in the operating systems were not standardized in a day. In fact, operating systems have been evolving through the years [2]. There were no operating systems in the early computers. In those systems, every program required full hardware specification to execute correctly and perform each trivial task, and its own drivers for peripheral devices like card readers and line printers.
    [Show full text]
  • Microkernel Construction Introduction
    Microkernel Construction Introduction Nils Asmussen 04/09/2020 1 / 32 Normal Organization Thursday, 4th DS, 2 SWS Slides: www.tudos.org ! Studies ! Lectures ! MKC Subscribe to our mailing list: www.tudos.org/mailman/listinfo/mkc2020 In winter term: Microkernel-based operating systems (MOS) Various labs 2 / 32 Organization due to COVID-19 Slides and video recordings of lectures will be published Questions can be asked on the mailing list Subscribe to the mailing list! Practical exercises are planed for the end of the semester Depending on how COVID-19 continues, exercises are in person or we use some video-conferencing tool 3 / 32 Goals 1 Provide deeper understanding of OS mechanisms 2 Look at the implementation details of microkernels 3 Make you become enthusiastic microkernel hackers 4 Propaganda for OS research done at TU Dresden and Barkhausen Institut 4 / 32 Outline Organization Monolithic vs. Microkernel Kernel design comparison Examples for microkernel-based systems Vision vs. Reality Challenges Overview About L4/NOVA 5 / 32 Monolithic Kernel System Design u s Application Application Application e r k Kernel e r File Network n e Systems Stacks l m Memory Process o Drivers Management Management d e Hardware 6 / 32 Monolithic Kernel OS (Propaganda) System components run in privileged mode No protection between system components Faulty driver can crash the whole system Malicious app could exploit bug in faulty driver More than 2=3 of today's OS code are drivers No need for good system design Direct access to data structures Undocumented
    [Show full text]
  • Can Microkernels Mitigate Microarchitectural Attacks?⋆
    Can Microkernels Mitigate Microarchitectural Attacks?? Gunnar Grimsdal1, Patrik Lundgren2, Christian Vestlund3, Felipe Boeira1, and Mikael Asplund1[0000−0003−1916−3398] 1 Department of Computer and Information Science, Link¨oping University, Sweden ffelipe.boeira,[email protected] 2 Westermo Network Technologies [email protected] 3 Sectra AB, Link¨oping,Sweden Abstract. Microarchitectural attacks such as Meltdown and Spectre have attracted much attention recently. In this paper we study how effec- tive these attacks are on the Genode microkernel framework using three different kernels, Okl4, Nova, and Linux. We try to answer the question whether the strict process separation provided by Genode combined with security-oriented kernels such as Okl4 and Nova can mitigate microar- chitectural attacks. We evaluate the attack effectiveness by measuring the throughput of data transfer that violates the security properties of the system. Our results show that the underlying side-channel attack Flush+Reload used in both Meltdown and Spectre, is effective on all in- vestigated platforms. We were also able to achieve high throughput using the Spectre attack, but we were not able to show any effective Meltdown attack on Okl4 or Nova. Keywords: Genode, Meltdown, Spectre, Flush+Reload, Okl4, Nova 1 Introduction It used to be the case that general-purpose operating systems were mostly found in desktop computers and servers. However, as IoT devices are becoming in- creasingly more sophisticated, they tend more and more to require a powerful operating system such as Linux, since otherwise all basic services must be im- plemented and maintained by the device developers. At the same time, security has become a prime concern both in IoT and in the cloud domain.
    [Show full text]
  • Operating System Support for Run-Time Security with a Trusted Execution Environment
    Operating System Support for Run-Time Security with a Trusted Execution Environment - Usage Control and Trusted Storage for Linux-based Systems - by Javier Gonz´alez Ph.D Thesis IT University of Copenhagen Advisor: Philippe Bonnet Submitted: January 31, 2015 Last Revision: May 30, 2015 ITU DS-nummer: D-2015-107 ISSN: 1602-3536 ISBN: 978-87-7949-302-5 1 Contents Preface8 1 Introduction 10 1.1 Context....................................... 10 1.2 Problem....................................... 12 1.3 Approach...................................... 14 1.4 Contribution.................................... 15 1.5 Thesis Structure.................................. 16 I State of the Art 18 2 Trusted Execution Environments 20 2.1 Smart Cards.................................... 21 2.1.1 Secure Element............................... 23 2.2 Trusted Platform Module (TPM)......................... 23 2.3 Intel Security Extensions.............................. 26 2.3.1 Intel TXT.................................. 26 2.3.2 Intel SGX.................................. 27 2.4 ARM TrustZone.................................. 29 2.5 Other Techniques.................................. 32 2.5.1 Hardware Replication........................... 32 2.5.2 Hardware Virtualization.......................... 33 2.5.3 Only Software............................... 33 2.6 Discussion...................................... 33 3 Run-Time Security 36 3.1 Access and Usage Control............................. 36 3.2 Data Protection................................... 39 3.3 Reference
    [Show full text]
  • The Nizza Secure-System Architecture
    Appears in the proceedings of CollaborateCom 2005, San Jose, CA, USA The Nizza Secure-System Architecture Hermann Härtig Michael Hohmuth Norman Feske Christian Helmuth Adam Lackorzynski Frank Mehnert Michael Peter Technische Universität Dresden Institute for System Architecture D-01062 Dresden, Germany [email protected] Abstract rely on a standard OS (including the kernel) to assure their security properties. The trusted computing bases (TCBs) of applications run- To address the conflicting requirements of complete ning on today’s commodity operating systems have become functionality and the protection of security-sensitive data, extremely large. This paper presents an architecture that researchers have devised system architectures that reduce allows to build applications with a much smaller TCB. It the system’s TCB by running kernels in untrusted mode is based on a kernelized architecture and on the reuse of in a secure compartment on top of a small security kernel; legacy software using trusted wrappers. We discuss the de- security-sensitive services run alongside the OS in isolated sign principles, the architecture and some components, and compartments of their own. This architecture is widely re- a number of usage examples. ferred to as kernelized standard OS or kernelized system. In this paper, we describe Nizza, a new kernelized- system architecture. In the design of Nizza, we set out to answer the question of how small the TCB can be made. 1 Introduction We have argued in previous work that the (hardware and software) technologies needed to build small secure-system Desktop and hand-held computers are used for many platforms have become much more mature since earlier at- functions, often in parallel, some of which are security tempts [8].
    [Show full text]
  • Tahoe-LAFS Documentation Release 1.X
    Tahoe-LAFS Documentation Release 1.x The Tahoe-LAFS Developers January 19, 2017 Contents 1 Welcome to Tahoe-LAFS! 3 1.1 What is Tahoe-LAFS?..........................................3 1.2 What is “provider-independent security”?................................3 1.3 Access Control..............................................4 1.4 Get Started................................................4 1.5 License..................................................4 2 Installing Tahoe-LAFS 5 2.1 First: In Case Of Trouble.........................................5 2.2 Pre-Packaged Versions..........................................5 2.3 Preliminaries...............................................5 2.4 Install the Latest Tahoe-LAFS Release.................................6 2.5 Running the tahoe executable.....................................8 2.6 Running the Self-Tests..........................................8 2.7 Common Problems............................................9 2.8 Using Tahoe-LAFS............................................9 3 How To Run Tahoe-LAFS 11 3.1 Introduction............................................... 11 3.2 Do Stuff With It............................................. 12 3.3 Socialize................................................. 13 3.4 Complain................................................. 13 4 Configuring a Tahoe-LAFS node 15 4.1 Node Types................................................ 16 4.2 Overall Node Configuration....................................... 16 4.3 Connection Management........................................
    [Show full text]
  • Comparative Studies of 10 Programming Languages Within 10 Diverse Criteria Revision 1.0
    Comparative Studies of 10 Programming Languages within 10 Diverse Criteria Revision 1.0 Rana Naim∗ Mohammad Fahim Nizam† Concordia University Montreal, Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada Quebec, Canada [email protected] [email protected] Sheetal Hanamasagar‡ Jalal Noureddine§ Concordia University Montreal, Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada Quebec, Canada [email protected] [email protected] Marinela Miladinova¶ Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada [email protected] Abstract This is a survey on the programming languages: C++, JavaScript, AspectJ, C#, Haskell, Java, PHP, Scala, Scheme, and BPEL. Our survey work involves a comparative study of these ten programming languages with respect to the following criteria: secure programming practices, web application development, web service composition, OOP-based abstractions, reflection, aspect orientation, functional programming, declarative programming, batch scripting, and UI prototyping. We study these languages in the context of the above mentioned criteria and the level of support they provide for each one of them. Keywords: programming languages, programming paradigms, language features, language design and implementation 1 Introduction Choosing the best language that would satisfy all requirements for the given problem domain can be a difficult task. Some languages are better suited for specific applications than others. In order to select the proper one for the specific problem domain, one has to know what features it provides to support the requirements. Different languages support different paradigms, provide different abstractions, and have different levels of expressive power. Some are better suited to express algorithms and others are targeting the non-technical users. The question is then what is the best tool for a particular problem.
    [Show full text]