[Mono-dev] Mono on Windows Native NT API

[Kornél Pál]

Hi,

You will get a very limited functionality because ntdll isn't the only 
user mode module enabling you to access kernel mode services.

Also note that large parts of CreateProcess are implemented outside of 
ntdll.

Anyway I would suggest you to port the io-layer to native NT API. You 
may need modifications in other parts as well but this is the best 
solution I can think of if you really don't want to use kernel32.dll and 
advapi32.dll.

Kornél

Peacebreaker wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> since a couple of weeks I am playing with the very core of Windows (Server
> 2003) and managed to trim down the OS to about 8MB (6.5MB with ntfs
> compression) on disk running only the NT kernel with a number of drivers
> (bus, fs, net...). I wrote a very very basic console in c that starts in
> user mode after kernel initialization is done (replacing the session manager
> subsystem). As I am not that pleased with having to code c I wondered if one
> could get .Net applications to run at this level. That's where mono comes
> into play.
> 
> So my question is: Is it possible (with moderate effort) to port Mono to
> native NT API? There is no Win32 API at all (user32.dll, advapi.dll...). The
> only thing that's left of Windows is just the plain native NT API
> (ntdll.dll). It is possible? Where do I have to start? What are the
> functions to look at? Where can I find the related parts in the mono source
> code?
> 
> Of course there is no need for GUI support or other "high level" stuff.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Peace