ehmry/genode
ehmry
/
genode
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Releases Wiki Activity

Road map for 2020

This commit is contained in:
Norman Feske 2020-01-20 16:44:55 +01:00 committed by Christian Helmuth
parent 7b964fa700
commit a2b303e95a
2 changed files with 166 additions and 136 deletions
Show Stats Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

24
doc/news.txt
View File

@ -3,6 +3,30 @@
Genode News
===========
Road Map for 2020 | 2020-01-20
##############################
| In 2019, we will be concerned about dwarfing the barrier of entry into
| the Genode world.
Following the last year's leitmotif of "bridging worlds", we turn our
attention to the removal of the hurdles faced by aspiring developers and
users. During the annual road-map
[https://lists.genode.org/pipermail/users/2019-December/006987.html - discussion]
on our mailing list, we identified four tangible approaches towards that
goal. First, making Sculpt OS more user friendly. Second, reinforcing trust in
Genode by fostering the framework's high quality. Third, making the tooling
around Genode a joy to use. And finally, the illustration of Genode's
versatility in the form practical use cases.
Besides this overall theme, we plan to continue our commitment to the
NXP i.MX SoC family, revisit Genode's low-latency audio support, and
extend the cultivation of Ada/SPARK within (and on top of) Genode.
More background information about the new road map and a rough schedule are
presented at our official [https:/about/road-map - road-map page].
Genode OS Framework release 19.11 | 2019-11-28
##############################################

278
doc/road_map.txt
View File

@ -14,122 +14,121 @@ The road map is not fixed. If there is commercial interest of pushing the
Genode technology to a certain direction, we are willing to revisit our plans.
Review of 2018
Review of 2019
##############
Sculpt is our take on creating a Genode-based general-purpose operating
system. When we declared 2018 as Genode's Year of Sculpt one year ago, our
vision of how Sculpt OS would shape up was still vague. We were convinced that
we had - functionality-wise - all building blocks of a general-purpose OS in
place. But it was rather unclear how to best put them together to attain a
practical system. The unconquered design space seemed vast, which was both
exciting but also - at times - a bit paralyzing.
For the road map 2019, we picked "bridging worlds" as our guiding theme:
(1) Lowering the friction when combining existing software with Genode,
(2) Fostering interoperability with widely used protocols and APIs, and
(3) Making Genode easier to approach and generally more practical.
The Year of Sculpt was more than anything a design-space exploration, not
an up-front planned activity. The process was driven by intensive
brainstorming, experimentation, and the continuous practical evaluation
through the day-to-day use of the system by its developers. For us, this ride
was certainly the most rewarding period in Genode's history so far. Now, when
looking at the result, we are proud about what we have achieved together.
Whenever having the chance to showing off Sculpt running on our laptops,
the system doesn't fail to impress.
With respect to (1), we identified Genode's custom tooling (build
system, run scripts, ports mechanism, depot tools) as a point of
friction. They are arguably powerful and flexible but require a lot of
up-front learning. This is certainly a burden unacceptable for a casual
developer without a black belt in Make and Expect/Tcl. The new
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/19.11#New_tooling_for_bridging_existing_build_systems_with_Genode - Goa]
tool rearranges the existing tools in a way that puts the concerns of casual
developers into focus, allowing for the use of commodity build systems,
eliminating Tcl syntax from the equation, running sub-second test cycles, and
streamlining the packaging of software.
Unsurprisingly, many topics of the past year had a direct connection to
Sculpt, e.g., the NIC router, the huge device-driver efforts, the GUI-stack
improvements, our custom microcode update mechanism, the software packaging
and deployment, and the work on the file-system and networking stacks.
On account of (2), we
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/19.05#Broadened_CPU_architecture_support_and_updated_tool_chain - switched to C++17]
by default, fostered the use of
[https://genodians.org/ssumpf/2019-02-27-java-19-02 - Java],
updated Qt5, and put
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/19.11#C_runtime_with_improved_POSIX_compatibility - POSIX]
compatibility into the spotlight. We were eventually able to dissolve the need
for our custom Unix runtime (Noux) because all features of Noux are covered by
our regular libc now.
The bottom line of the Year of Sculpt is that Sculpt OS has become a
surprisingly versatile and robust system. It can be deployed in a few seconds
by booting from USB, runs as day-to-day OS on almost all of our laptops, its
mechanisms for installing and updating software from packages have become a
second nature, and it continues to inspire us to explore new application
areas. Even outside of Genode Labs, there is a small and enthusiastic user
base.
Our biggest step towards (3) is the [https://genodians.org] website we
started in winter 2019, which gives individual members of our community
an easy way to present thoughts, projects, and experiences.
Complementing Genode's formal documentation, it also conserves practical
tips and tricks that were previously not covered in written form.
Besides Sculpt, we set forth a number of other goals one year ago.
When speaking of "bridging worlds", we should not forget to mention the
tremendous effort to bring Sculpt-OS-like workloads to the 64-bit ARM world.
Thanks to the added support for
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/19.08#64-bit_ARM_and_NXP_i.MX8 - multi-core AARCH64],
hardware-based
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/19.11#Virtualization_of_64-bit_ARM_platforms - virtualization],
and network/USB/graphics drivers for the i.MX8 SoC, the flexibility of Sculpt
OS will eventually become available on PC hardware and ARM-based devices
alike.
:The transition from NOVA to our custom kernel and seL4: is ongoing but
the topic received less attention than originally planned. This has
two reasons. First, Alexander Boettcher's excellent maintenance and gradual
improvement of NOVA keeps us hooked. Over the past year, there has been not
much incentive of actual Sculpt users to move away from NOVA. Second, there
is renewed interest in NOVA beyond our use of the kernel. Most specifically,
we started joining forces with
[https://cyberus-technology.de - Cyberus Technology] to improve NOVA
together. That's fantastic!
This development notwithstanding, we still follow our ambition to bring the
support for the other kernels like seL4 on par with NOVA to give Genode
users the ultimate choice.
Speaking of seL4, throughout the year, we have continuously adapted Genode
to the kernel's upstream development and enjoy the informal collaboration
with seL4 developer community. That said, the seL4 version of Genode still
remains a side activity with no commercial backing.
:NXP i.MX: support has become much better, particularly with respect to
network support and performance. Our ongoing commitment to the i.MX
platform is also fueled by privacy-advocating projects like the Librem
phone that are based on the same SoC.
:Software quality and resilience: ultimately became the title story of the
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/18.11#Raising_the_bar_of_quality_assurance - release 18.11].
We greatly intensified the amount and quality of testing, explored static
code analysis, and vastly scaled up the complexity of workloads carried
by Genode.
:System monitoring, tracing, profiling: remains a somewhat underdeveloped area
of Genode. As a step in the right direction, we introduced a simple
trace-logging tool. Also, Sculpt's introspection features like the ability
to inspect the runtime's state live on the machine make Genode's behavior
easier to capture and to understand. But that said, the use of these
features remains a black art mastered only by a few.
:Java: has found its way into Genode via our port of OpenJDK. Details such as
the enabling of the JIT engine on ARM took much more effort than anticipated.
We are happy to report that Tomcat works fine. But at the current state, it
is still too early to advertise Java as a stable feature.
Over the course of 2019, we admittedly skipped a few topics originally
mentioned on our road map. In particular, the user-visible side of
Sculpt OS received less attention than originally envisioned. We also
deferred several ideas we had in mind about reworking our GUI stack.
Instead, we expanded our work in the areas of storage (block-level APIs,
test infrastructure,
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/19.11#Preliminary_block-device_encrypter - block encryption])
and
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/19.08#Flexible_keyboard_layouts - input processing].
This shift of focus is mostly attributed to the priorities of Genode Labs'
customers who fund our work.
2019 - Bridging Worlds
######################
2020 - Dwarfing the barrier of entry
####################################
We dedicated the year 2018 to prove that Genode scales to general-purpose
computing. [https://genode.org/download/sculpt - Sculpt OS] leaves no doubt
about that. The logical next step is to make Sculpt OS relevant and appealing
for a broader community.
During our public road-map
[https://lists.genode.org/pipermail/users/2018-December/006517.html - discussion]
on our mailing list, we identified three ways towards that goal:
Genode as a technology is there. For more than one decade, we walked unfathomed
territory, fought with countless deep rabbit holes, took risky decisions,
tracked back, explored design spaces, developed taste and distaste, pruned
technical debt, and eventually found formulas of success. Today, there are no
(fundamental) unsolved questions. All the puzzle pieces are in place. There
could be no better proof than our daily use of Sculpt OS. The time is right
to make Genode palatable for a wider circle. We identified four actionable
topics to achieve that.
# In order to capture the interest of new Genode users, we have to
put *emphasis on the practical use* of Genode, not on its technical prowess.
With practical use, we refer to both desktop computing and headless
scenarios like network appliances and servers. Over the course of 2019,
we plan to establish (variations of) Sculpt as an attractive foundation for
those application areas, and advance Genode's protocol stacks (storage and
encryption come in mind) and hardware support (e.g., ARM 64-bit) accordingly.
:User friendliness of Sculpt OS:
This will go hand in hand with making Genode easier to discover and to use,
describing use cases at a digestible level of detail, and fostering the
sense of one community that includes both users and developers.
Until now, Sculpt OS is not exactly friendly towards users who are
unfamiliar with the Unix command-line tools. Since Sculpt is not Unix
based, this is a bit paradoxical. 2020 will give Sculpt OS a friendlier
and discoverable user experience. In this context, we will inevitably
put our attention to Genode's GUI stack.
# Since an operating system is only valuable with applications, we have
to make the *porting of existing software* and the use of popular
*programming languages* a frictionless experience. Besides supporting the
reuse of existing software, we should also cultivate the "Genode way" as
an option for designing native applications. Such applications can
leverage the unique capabilities of the framework, in particular the
sandboxing of code at a very fine granularity and the low footprint of raw
Genode components.
:Perception of high quality:
# Because an operating system does not exist in isolation, we must foster
Genode's *interoperability* with other systems and applications by speaking
widely used protocols and supporting universally expected
software-integration features.
Compared to commodity operating systems who stood the test of time,
Genode is a young and largely unproven technology. It understandably calls
for skepticism. All the more we must leave no doubts about our high
quality standards. There must be no room for uncertainty. Hence, during
2020, we will intensify the consolidation and optimization of the framework
and its API, and talk about it.
:Enjoyable tooling:
Genode's success at large will depend on developers. As of today, software
development for Genode requires a huge up-front learning curve. This is
fine for people who are already convinced of Genode. But it unacceptable
for casual developers who want to get their toes wet. We should aim for
tooling that allows new developers to keep up their flow and beloved
tools. The recently introduced [https://genodians.org/nfeske/2019-11-25-goa - Goa]
tooling is our first take in this respect. It is certainly too early to call
Goa a success. In order to find out if we are on the right track, we want to
expose Goa to as many problems as possible, primarily by the means of
porting software. Also, things like IDE usage or adapters for a variety of
build systems will certainly move into focus in 2020.
:Convincing use cases:
Use cases can give exemplary proof of the fitness of Genode. We already
took a few baby steps to extend the range of documented use cases beyond
Sculpt OS last year. The boot2java scenenario comes in mind. 2020 will
hopefully see several more illustrations of Genode's versatility.
Milestones for 2019
Apart from this overall theme, we plan to continue our commitment to the
NXP i.MX SoC family, revisit Genode's low-latency audio support, and
extend the cultivation of Ada/SPARK within (and on top of) Genode.
Milestones for 2020
###################
In the following, we present a rough schedule of the planned work. As usual,
@ -137,57 +136,64 @@ it is not set in stone. If you are interested in a particular line of work,
please get in touch.
February - Release 19.02
February - Release 20.02
========================
* OpenJDK with JIT on ARM and x86
* Sculpt with support for online package discovery
* Showcase of a Genode-based web appliance
* Showcase of a multi-port network appliance
* Consolidation: removal of the Noux runtime
* Library version of the init component
* Updated audio drivers
* Sculpt
* 64-bit ARM (i.MX8)
* Revised administrative user interface
* System image without Unix tools
May - Release 19.05
May - Release 20.05
===================
* Updated "Genode Foundations" book
* Tool-chain update and SDK (C++-17, enabling O3 by default, considering GDC)
* Headless Sculpt
* Pluggable network drivers
* Native support for Let's Encrypt certificates
* Revisited GUI-related framework interfaces
* Consolidation
* Block-level components (update to Genode's modern block APIs)
* ARM device drivers (introducing the notion of a platform driver)
* Improved STL support (e.g., threading and mutexes)
* Continuous POSIX-compliance testing
* Systematic network-stack stress and performance tests
* Desktop: panel and virtual desktops
* Use case: Genode-based network router
* Goa: broadened support for 3rd-party build systems
* Native tool chain, including Git
* Sculpt
* Improved interactive system composition
* Passphrase handling
* Clipboard support
* Kernel-agnostic virtual-machine monitors
* ARM 64-bit
* Interactive device management
* Keyboard-controlled administration
* Support for BSPs maintained outside of Genode's mainline repository
August - Release 19.08
August - Release 20.08
======================
* Interactive tracing tool
* Virtualization support for the base-hw kernel on x86
* Library version of the init component
* Revisited GUI-related framework interfaces
* Extended tooling for performance monitoring
* Goa: Qt development workflow
* Desktop
* Native mail client
* Native web browser
* Sculpt
* Fine-grained USB-device policies
* Interactive depot manager (ability to add/remove software providers)
* Configuration of CPU affinities and scheduling priorities
* Audio
* Showcase of a Sculpt-based network router
* VM-based desktop applications (enhanced VM integration features)
* Updated Qt5
* Consolidation of the Noux runtime (performance)
* Configurable CPU resources
* On-screen documentation
* Block encryption via our
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/19.11#Preliminary_block-device_encrypter - consistent block encrypter]
implemented in Ada/SPARK
* USB audio
* Initial version of a kernel implemented in Ada/SPARK
November - Release 19.11
November - Release 20.11
========================
* Building Genode packages directly on Sculpt
* VNC server support
* Sculpt
* On-target debugging of components
* Shutdown protocol
* Block-level encrypted storage
* Drag-and-drop protocol
* Consolidation of capability-space management across kernels
* CPU-load balancing
* Hardware-accelerated graphics on i.MX8 (experimental)
* Reworked audio stack (interfaces, mixing)
* Sculpt: component lifetime management, shutdown protocol
* VFS plugins for lwext4 and FUSE-based file systems