new experimental stripped-down version of plex86, which is now
a user-code-only VM. I ripped out all the fancy stuff in plex86,
such that under that right conditions, user-code (protection level 3)
can run at near native speeds inside the plex86 VM.
The general idea is that bochs emulates all the initial real-mode code,
and guest kernel code (protection level 0). When it senses the
right conditions (like the context switches to user-code), a shim
is called to execute the guest inside the plex86 VM. All guest-generated
faults/exceptions are then forwarded back to bochs to be handled in
the emulator.
Actually, I'm not yet adding the mods to the bochs code (other than
the shim code which is in a separate file), until I hear that we're
back in a more development mode with bochs after the 2.0 release.
The plex86 subdirectory is really a separate project. It's just more
convenient to co-develop it with bochs for now. Both projects are
currently LGPL, but each should be taken to be a separate project,
and have their own license file. Plex86 (it's only a kernel driver
now) could ultimately be used with other projects, as it's modular.
I talked with Bryce, and we both agreed it's OK to keep plex86 as
a subdir in bochs for now.
