I hope you know plan9 or other OSes beside *nix/POSIX so you have a larger field of view.
If I had crossed the desire threshold to start that project (#1 project in my mind since I left college) I'd leave the C ecosystem altogether, design a typed ,functional ,binary friendly, modular, subset of C (and probably be forever alone). Something in the groove of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitC, even though its talented author concluded it wasn't a successful path.
If I had crossed the desire threshold to start that project (#1 project in my mind since I left college) I'd leave the C ecosystem altogether, design a typed ,functional ,binary friendly, modular, subset of C (and probably be forever alone). Something in the groove of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitC, even though its talented author concluded it wasn't a successful path.