Inferno is an operating system that can run as an application or OS. It was developed at Bell Labs as a successor to Plan 9. Inferno supports a variety of architectures and can run on bare hardware or as an emulator. Applications can run on any Inferno system without recompilation. The Limbo programming language was developed for Inferno as a type-safe language with garbage collection. Limbo takes influences from languages like Pascal, Alef, Occam, and ML and employs strong typing, automatic memory management, and inter-thread communication via channels. To start with Inferno, one needs to download it, set the environment path, launch the emulator, open a text editor to write Limbo programs,

1. INFERNO AND LIMBO AN INTRODUCTION

2. INFERNO What is inferno ? Inferno is an operating system which can act as an application in system as well as operating system. Inferno developed as a successor of the operating system plan 9 in bells laboratory. Inferno is an independent, stand alone and scaling capable network OS but can also be used on Host operating system.

4. Intel Xscale

5. IBM

6. PowerPc

7. ARM StrongARM(ARM and thumb)

9. Inferno continued… It can run on bare hardware and also available as emulator. Applications written for the emulator or for the native platform can be run on any inferno system without recompilation This made possible by inferno’s use of virtual machine At the time of development of inferno the developers required a secure, type-safe, garbage collection language They developed a own language LIMBO.

10. LIMBO Limbo is a programming language designed by Sean Dorward, Rob pike and Phil winter bottom. Features of other programming languages limbo took Pascal ( Declaration) Alef(Channels, ADTs) Occam(Channels) Hoare’s Communicating Sequential Process( CSP) (Channels alternating on channels) Newsqueak,ML(module system, compile time type checking, garbage collection) and also its OWN ideas. It employs strong type checking both at compile time and runtime , automatic garbage collection and inter thread communication over typed channels. It is designed for safe execution even on small machines without hardware memory protection.

11. START WORKING…

12. What u needed? Download Inferno. Start working with it.. Where can I download inferno? Use the link below.. http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/downloads.html You will get as zip file extract the file and put under a directory you wish.

13. Downloaded inferno what to do next? Set environment variable Start working with inferno as illustrated with the following screen shots

14. Go to the directory in which u have copied the inferno For example in windows xp go the path as specified below C:nfernoNt86in Copy tat address and follow the next screen shot. Setting environment variable

15. Go to command prompt and type the following set path=%path%;C:nfernot86in Environment variable set successfully

16. AFTER SETTING ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE STEP 1: Go to command prompt Type emu -rC:nferno –g1034x768 ( -g1024x768 usually preferred resolution) Type wm/wm in next line -r = root set -g= resolution set

17. Inferno window opens

18. Step 2: To start programming need to open a editor. Before moving on to editor need to create a directory of our own we needed

19. cd /usr - > opens upon the usr directory in inferno mkdir myfolder - > makes a new directory and directory name is my folder cd myfolder -> opens the folder u created. All the programs can be save under your folder u created . . .

20. STEP 3: At last going to open editor and start programming.

21. This is the editor window where u can type your programs and save under the folder u created

22. Save the file with .b extension under the directory u created A simple program to type and compiling procedure

23. STEP 4: Compiling Open the shell window again and follow the procedure below To compile : ->limbo filename.b ->filename Output displayed

24. ByM.VenmukilII MCA (University of Madras) Further Reference http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/papers/limbo.html