Sixth - system for data storage, computation, exploration and interaction
1 General
- This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
- Program author:
- Svjatoslav Agejenko
- Homepage: http://svjatoslav.eu
- Email: mailto://svjatoslav@svjatoslav.eu
- Other software projects hosted at svjatoslav.eu
1.1 Source code
- Download latest snapshot in TAR GZ format
- Browse Git repository online
- Clone Git repository using command:
git clone http://www2.svjatoslav.eu/git/sixth.git
2 Vision - A tool to amplify human ability
Idea is to design all encompassing, flexible and powerful virtual environment where I can live in and very efficiently do all my computing tasks enjoyably and with playful ease.
Examples of extendable environments where one can live in and do almost everything:
- GNU Emacs
- At the heart, Emacs is text editor on top of Lisp runtime.
- Eclipse IDE
- In essence OSGi platform with a text editor.
In both cases you can develop/install plugins for every purpose imaginable.
I would like to create general purpose environment with the following properties:
- Makes lots of complex data intuitive to:
- explore, understand
- manipulate and compute on
- Extensively relying on:
- Realtime 3D graphics with immediate feedback loop.
“Virtual reality holds the key to the evolution of the human mind” Dr. Lawrence Angelo, The Lawnmower Man (1992)
- Flexible and distributed computation and data storage.
- Cross device:
- Easily switch and/or combine computers to work seamlessly on any tasks.
- User interface, data, software, running proceses etc are not contained to any device.
3 Current status
- Formulated high-level vision / goal.
- In the process of implementing some of building blocks:
- System is nowhere near complete (given magnitude of effort required and my free time available). Contributions welcome ! :)
4 Computation ideas
- Program - stored instructions for execution by computer.
- Process - Currently running program.
- Process is self contained. Has a full copy of program code and
every dependent library.
- Memory used by processes is content addressed/deduplicated at low level in the system.
- This allows:
- Upgrading software installed in the system without breaking already running processes.
- Easier migration of running processes between physical computers.
- Possibility to suspend/resume arbitrary processes to permament storage.
- Possibility checkpoint/revert running process.
- Possibility to clone/branch running process.
- Process is self contained. Has a full copy of program code and
every dependent library.
5 Frequently Given Answers
- Why such name ?
- In short: it's just a number.
- Many years ago inspired by the ideas of Forth (programming language) I decided to create my own implementation Fifth (computing/programming environment).
- Then I realized I miss type safe object oriented capabilities. So I updated the name to Sixth and switched to Java.