> WSL1 was implementing the Linux syscall API on the Windows kernel, which proved to be much more complex than it appears to be.
I've long wondered, and again now that Chat GPT is proving so adept at coding, if this translation layer could be automated. Do humans actually have to hand-code each syscall? Or are there just enough edge conditions that can't be automated?
The hard part isn't so much writing the code as it is testing the code. The WINE server is decades old, porting API calls to another kernel isn't an entirely new or novel process. Getting all the software to work right is an ongoing process though, and it requires careful deliberation over what works and what doesn't. WINE code is still being refined to this day in response to new titles and old bugfixes.
So, I won't preclude the idea of AI helping, but I think human effort is still the bottleneck for projects like this. Even if AI could write perfect code 100% of the time, testing and troubleshooting would probably still be the larger timesink.
I've long wondered, and again now that Chat GPT is proving so adept at coding, if this translation layer could be automated. Do humans actually have to hand-code each syscall? Or are there just enough edge conditions that can't be automated?