Road map for 2018
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Road Map for 2018 | 2018-01-17
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##############################
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| 2018 will be the year of Sculpt.
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In autumn last year, a new Genode system scenario called "Sculpt" emerged.
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By the end of 2017, all members of the Genode-Labs team switched to this
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operating system on their laptops. The planning of 2018 revolves around the
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ambition to expand the user base of Sculpt in several steps. Additionally,
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the year will be focused on software quality, device-driver support for
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popular ARM boards, Genode's custom kernel, and seL4.
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The new road map is available at the [https:/about/road-map - road-map page].
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Genode at FOSDEM 2018 | 2017-01-16
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Genode at FOSDEM 2018 | 2017-01-16
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##################################
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##################################
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233
doc/road_map.txt
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doc/road_map.txt
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@ -14,132 +14,132 @@ The road map is not fixed. If there is commercial interest of pushing the
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Genode technology to a certain direction, we are willing to revisit our plans.
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Genode technology to a certain direction, we are willing to revisit our plans.
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Review of 2016
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Review of 2017
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We originally started the year 2016 with the ambition to expand the Genode
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The technical topics of 2017 ranged from hardware-accelerated graphics, over
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community by improving the project's appeal towards system builders and
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UEFI, greatly improved seL4 support, user-level networking, file-system
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privacy cautious users. Hence, we started the year with the resolution to
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infrastructure, to an consolidated framework API. However, one topic stood out
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increase our engagement with the wider community, i.e., in the form of
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the most, which is the practical use of Genode as day-to-day OS.
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publishing tutorial-like articles. Over the course of the year, however, we
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increasingly shifted our focus to architectural and deeply technical topics
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instead.
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We ultimately prioritized the concerns of the existing Genode users over
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Whereas the so-called "Turmvilla" system scenario enabled a few enthusiasts to
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extending our user base. The existing users - ourself included - are primarily
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work on a Genode-based system since mid of 2015, the scenario was quite rigid
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interested in API stability and maturity. So we made it our priority to free
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and required significant manual labour for any customization. Although it was
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Genode from legacies and known architectural limitations. Over the year, we
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not really inviting for potential users, it illustrated well that all the
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introduced and cultivated the new framework API that is designed for safety,
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basic building blocks - in particular the driver stacks - were in place. But
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achieved cross-kernel binary compatibility, and revised the framework's most
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it would have been be quite a stretch to call Turmvilla a general-purpose OS
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fundamental protocols. Now that the time of sweeping architectural changes
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at that point. The year 2017 introduced two pivotal features that allowed us to
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lies behind us, we feel much more confident to approach new users.
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break free from the limitations of Turmvilla-like scenarios, namely the new
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[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/17.05#Package_management - package-management concept]
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and the ability to
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[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/17.02#Dynamically_reconfigurable_init_component - compose and modify subsystems dynamically].
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Apart from the architectural foundations, among the many other construction
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Inspired by these new features, a new system scenario called "Sculpt" emerged
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sites of 2016 were the support for the RISC-V architecture, hosting Genode on
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in Autumn 2017. The combination of Genode's recursive architecture with the
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top of the Muen separation kernel and the seL4 microkernel, huge device driver
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dynamic reconfigurability of the init component allows the user to
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improvements (wifi, graphics, USB, ACPI), VirtualBox 5, virtual networking,
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interactively shape the running Genode system including any subsystem or even
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TOR, Rust and many others. Even though we largely deviated from our original
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configurations of individual components. The system structure is always at the
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ambition, we are proud of the outcome of the past year.
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user's fingertips and can by modified instantly using a text editor. At the
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same time, the new package management greatly helps to keep the complexity at
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a manageable level. Whereas Turmvilla users rarely updated their installation
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out of hesitance to break their work environment, Sculpt is routinely updated
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on a weekly basis. The switch of the entire Genode-Labs team to Genode full
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time by the end of year was certainly our biggest milestone so far.
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Big picture for 2017
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2018 - The year of Sculpt
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####################
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#########################
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Our principle direction as declared at he beginning of 2016 remains unchanged
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The "Turmvilla" era lies behind us. So let the "Sculpt" era begin!
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for 2017: Making Genode accessible to the world outside the inner circle
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of us enthusiasts. But rather than making this direction the top priority for
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now, let us first push the bounds of what the current users and
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developers can do with Genode. Hence, for the overall theme of 2017, we
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picked: *stability and scalability*. Once Genode reaches the point where it is
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routinely used and stressed for various purposes by the "inner circle", a
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growing user base will follow naturally and organically.
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During our seasonal road-map discussion on our mailing list, we identified the
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Having used Sculpt over the past few months, we feel confident to make the
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following topics to address in 2017:
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system scenario available to a larger audience. In 2018, we will take four
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steps:
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:Application binary interfaces and package management:
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# Sculpt for Early Adopters (EA)
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By mid 2016, we attained binary compatibility across the various OS
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The current version of Sculpt accompanied with plain-text documentation
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kernels supported by Genode, which cleared the way to introduce the notion
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that explains the concept and use. It is intended for people who are
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of a Genode application binary interface (ABI). This, in turn, is a
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already familiar with Genode, in particular users that experimented with
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prerequisite for a scalable handling of binary packages. In 2017, we
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Turmvilla-like scenarios in the past. Sculpt EA expects basic Vim skills
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will leverage these foundations in two ways: Allowing the easy creation
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from the user.
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of Genode systems out of packages, and realizing a system-update mechanism
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that allows us to automatically use (and thereby test) the latest versions
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of Genode components on our machines.
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:Dynamically reconfigurable subsystems:
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# Sculpt for The Curious (TC)
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Until now, Genode subsystems were either static (using the init component to
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A polished version of Sculpt that is more welcoming to the user and
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define them) or relied on a scenario-specific dynamic runtime environment
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accompanied with example subsystems that loosely resemble a traditional
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(like CLI monitor). By enhancing init to dynamically apply configuration
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notion of an operating system (like basic menus and window borders).
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changes, the need for special-purpose runtime environments will
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There will be a ready-to-use ISO image for Sculpt TC. So users won't need
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disappear. Scenarios like multi-stage booting, boot-medium detection, or
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to be familiar with Genode's source code and build system. As with Sculpt
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a dynamic desktop environment will become dramatically easier to realize.
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EA, Sculpt TC will still rely on the user's ability to use Vim.
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:Pruning the boot chain:
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# Sculpt by Visual Composition (VC)
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Today, Genode on x86 machines still relies on the legacy BIOS boot
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Whereas the earlier versions rely on text editing for sculpting the system,
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mechanism. We will explore alternatives such as UEFI boot and
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Sculpt VC will feature an interactive graphical user interface, which will
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coreboot.
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hopefully make the system tangible for users who live outside the terminal.
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:Asynchronous I/O:
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# Sculpt as a Community Experience (CE)
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With Genode 16.11, we successfully removed the last blocking inter-component
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Sculpt CE will allow anyone to play the role of a component provider.
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interfaces from the base framework. Still, other parts of the user-level
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Each user should be able to pick individual components or entire component
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infrastructure, in particular the libc still relies on blocking operations. Even
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compositions provided by others while maintaining complete control over the
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though we have to offer blocking I/O to user applications for POSIX
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system.
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compatibility, the mechanisms used behind the scenes will be changed to leverage
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Genode's asynchronous I/O primitives.
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:VirtualBox 5:
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In addition to working on Sculpt as the overall theme of the year, we will
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focus on the following topics:
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Currently, we maintain a fully-featured version of VirtualBox 4 (including
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:Gentle transition from NOVA to our custom kernel and seL4:
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USB pass-through, audio, shared folders, clipboard, dynamic desktop resizing)
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and a pretty basic version of VirtualBox 5 (without those integration
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features). In 2017, we will replace VirtualBox 4 by a fully featured
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version of VirtualBox 5.
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:Updated tool chain and Qt5:
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NOVA used to be our kernel of choice on x86 platforms. However, since the
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kernel is no longer actively developed, we had to take over the
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responsibility to maintain it. Whereas we feel confident in developing the
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kernel in an evolutionary way, the kernel has long-standing architectural
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limitations (i.e. kernel-memory management) that would require invasive
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changes. Instead of ramping up our engagement with NOVA, we'd like to focus
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on our custom kernel (base-hw) and the seL4 kernel. In 2018, we set out to
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enable Sculpt on base-hw. This involves the support for SMP, VT-x, and VT-d
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on x86.
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With version 17.05, we want to experiment with the idea of providing a
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:Freescale i.MX:
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long-term supportable version of the framework in addition to the quarterly
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releases. Consequently, at the time of its release, this version should use
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a modern tool chain that will remain current for the foreseeable future of
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Genode's regular development. The same holds true for Qt5.
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:Hardware-accelerated graphics on Intel:
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Based on the feedback from our community, Freescale i.MX support is of
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great interest, specifically i.MX6. Hence, we plan to improve the driver
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support for this SoC.
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Graphics is an important element for many use cases for Genode on x86-based
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:seL4:
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platforms. Even though we experimented with hardware-accelerated 3D
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graphics
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[http://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/10.08#Gallium3D_and_Intel_s_Graphics_Execution_Manager - many years ago],
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the current GUI stack is still based on software-based rendering.
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We want to overcome this limitation this year.
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:Native work flows:
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We will try to apply all improvements of Genode on seL4 whenever feasible.
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It also goes without saying that we will track seL4's upstream development.
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In the regularly used "Turmvilla" scenarios, most work flows require the
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:Software quality and resilience:
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use of Linux in a virtual machine. Over the course of the year, we want
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to move the most important work flows (namely software development and
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the work with emails) to Genode natively. As a precondition,
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we need to improve the usability of our GUI infrastructure by adding
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support for tiled and tabbed windows, and virtual desktops.
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:Storage:
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The modernized framework API introduced last year is an important stepping
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stone. But there is much more we can (and should) do, I.e., learning from
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the high-integrity computing community (e.g., implementing critical
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components in SPARK), leveling-up the scope and intensity of our automated
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tests, facilitating static code analysis, and employing software-hardening
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techniques. Of course, this scope goes far beyond the time frame of one
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year. The immediate prioritization of these topics will largely depend on
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the focus of commercial users funding the work.
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There are several storage-related topics that need our attention to
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:System monitoring, tracing, profiling:
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realize the goals stated above to our satisfaction. This includes the
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performance and stability of the used file-system stack, and the provision
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of file-based backup and cryptographic functionality.
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:Genode-based cloud appliances:
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The interactive use of Sculpt along with the prospects enabled by Genode's
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GPU support motivate us to optimize Genode towards low-latency multimedia
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applications. We will ultimately need to gain a deep understanding on
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inter-component interactions, in particular along time-critical data paths.
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Therefore, we plan to improve the tooling and cultivate the use of our
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existing but underused tracing support.
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We want to widen the application scope of Genode by enabling users to
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:Java:
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easily deploy Genode scenarios on Xen-based cloud platforms.
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By the end of 2018, we want to enable Genode to leverage the ecosystem
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around Java, which is - according to the TIOBE index - the most popular
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programming language.
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Milestones for 2017
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Milestones for 2018
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###################
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###################
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In the following, we present a rough schedule of the planned work. As usual,
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In the following, we present a rough schedule of the planned work. As usual,
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@ -147,39 +147,40 @@ it is not set in stone. If you are interested in a particular line of work,
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please get in touch.
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please get in touch.
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February - Release 17.02
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February - Release 18.02
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========================
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========================
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* Application binary interfaces (ABI)
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* Sculpt for Early Adopters (EA)
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* Dynamic init
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* Dynamic on-target package installation and deployment
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* VFS: asynchronous I/O
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* i.MX6 networking
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May - Release 17.05
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May - Release 18.05
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===================
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===================
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* Removal of deprecated APIs
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* Sculpt for The Curious (TC)
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* Updated tool chain
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* Updated Qt5
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* Easy creation of Genode systems out of packages
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* Feature-complete VirtualBox 5
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* Update of the Genode Foundations book
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* Update of the Genode Foundations book
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* Consistent use of the depot tools for automated tests
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* Qt5-based applications based on packages
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* SMP support for the base-hw kernel on x86
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August - Release 17.08
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August - Release 18.08
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======================
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======================
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* Hardware-accelerated graphics on Intel-based platforms
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* Sculpt by Visual Composition (VC)
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* Support for the seL4 kernel on x86_64 and ARM
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* Ability to (cleanly) restart device drivers
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* Use of Genode for cloud-computing appliances (deployment, virtio)
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* Updated PC hardware support
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* GUI: tiled and tabbed window management, virtual desktops
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* i.MX6 USB
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* Multi-component user mail agent
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* IOMMU support for the base-hw kernel on x86
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November - Release 17.11
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November - Release 18.11
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========================
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========================
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* Revised boot concept (UEFI, trimming the boot chain)
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* Sculpt as a Community Experience (CE)
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* Storage: backup, improved file-system support
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* Automated tests hosted on top of Sculpt
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* Native work flows for email and development work
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* Sculpt-like scenario for network appliances
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* Test automation for interactive system scenarios
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* Virtualization support for the base-hw kernel on x86
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