INCREASING USABILITY OF OPERATING SYSTEM FOR DEVELOPERS

Operating Systems are the most essential and integral part of the computer system. They provide a platform for execution of applications running on the system. They also serve as resource managers for all the running applications on it. Operating Systems are also considered as extended machine for they provide computer-human interface and hence, with the development of more complex computer systems and applications, the Operating Systems have become complex too. User applications and data in volatile memory are usually lost when an Operating System crashes because of errors caused by either hardware or software faults as it is the main execution platform of every application, running on the system. This is because most Operating Systems are designed to stop working when some internal errors are detected despite the possibility that user data and applications might still be intact and recoverable. The examples of such errors are the BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) on Windows system and panic on POSIX systems. The situation becomes even worst when the system is used by a developer, as the systems-under-development are more prone to errors and panics. Operating Systems are also responsible to manage file systems, where the actual program source files of the developers are maintained. The present research is dedicated to make Operating Systems more usable for developers. This usability can be increased in two ways, namely, error-identification and versioning. The idea is, almost all the systems are developed in layered form. If Operating Systems can identify separately each layer of the application along with their prototype, messages being passed to/from the upper layer to lower one and vice versa and if all the test cases of each layer individually can be given to the Operating System, the Operating System may identify the cause and place of the error. Moreover, versioning of file systems may also be done for any accidental changes in the file systems of the program source files. This feature may be extended as per the requirement of the developers, so that, the developers may find the Operating System more usable and stable for their work.