This patch make the ABI mechanism available to shared libraries other
than Genode's dynamic linker. It thereby allows us to introduce
intermediate ABIs at the granularity of shared libraries. This is useful
for slow-moving ABIs such as the libc's interface but it will also
become handy for the package management.
To implement the feature, the build system had to be streamlined a bit.
In particular, archive dependencies and shared-lib dependencies are now
handled separately, and the global list of 'SHARED_LIBS' is no more.
Now, the variable with the same name holds the per-target list of shared
libraries used by the target.
This patch removes the component_entry_point library, which used to
proved a hook for the libc to intercept the call of the
'Component::construct' function. The mechansim has several shortcomings
(see the discussion in the associated issue) and was complex. So we
eventually discarded the approach in favor of the explicit handling of
the startup.
A regular Genode component provides a 'Component::construct' function,
which is determined by the dynamic linker via a symbol lookup.
For the time being, the dynamic linker falls back to looking up a 'main'
function if no 'Component::construct' function could be found.
The libc provides an implementation of 'Component::construct', which
sets up the libc's task handling and finally call the function
'Libc::Component::construct' from the context of the appllication task.
This function is expected to be provided by the libc-using application.
Consequently, Genode components that use the libc have to implement the
'Libc::Component::construct' function.
The new 'posix' library provides an implementation of
'Libc::Component::construct' that calls a main function. Hence, POSIX
programs that merely use the POSIX API merely have to add 'posix' to the
'LIBS' declaration in their 'target.mk' file. Their execution starts at
'main'.
Issue #2199
This patch removes possible ambiguities with respect to the naming of
kernel-dependent binaries and libraries. It also removes the use of
kernel-specific global side effects from the build system. The reach of
kernel-specific peculiarities has thereby become limited to the actual
users of the respective 'syscall-<kernel>' libraries.
Kernel-specific build artifacts are no longer generated at magic places
within the build directory (like okl4's includes, or the L4 build
directories of L4/Fiasco and Fiasco.OC, or the build directories of
various kernels). Instead, such artifacts have been largely moved to the
libcache. E.g., the former '<build-dir>/l4/' build directory for the L4
build system resides at '<build-dir>/var/libcache/syscall-foc/build/'.
This way, the location is unique to the kernel. Note that various tools
are still generated somewhat arbitrarily under '<build-dir>/tool/' as
there is no proper formalism for building host tools yet.
As the result of this work, it has become possible to use a joint Genode
build directory that is usable with all kernels of a given hardware
platform. E.g., on x86_32, one can now seamlessly switch between linux,
nova, sel4, okl4, fiasco, foc, and pistachio without rebuilding any
components except for core, the kernel, the dynamic linker, and the timer
driver. At the current stage, such a build directory must still be
created manually. A change of the 'create_builddir' tool will follow to
make this feature easily available.
This patch also simplifies various 'run/boot_dir' plugins by removing
the option for an externally hosted kernel. This option remained unused
for many years now.
Issue #2190
Norman Feske