genode/repos/libports
Christian Prochaska b0935ef9b2 VFS: nonblocking interface
The VFS library can be used in single-threaded or multi-threaded
environments and depending on that, signals are handled by the same thread
which uses the VFS library or possibly by a different thread. If a VFS
plugin needs to block to wait for a signal, there is currently no way
which works reliably in both environments.

For this reason, this commit makes the interface of the VFS library
nonblocking, similar to the File_system session interface.

The most important changes are:

- Directories are created and opened with the 'opendir()' function and the
  directory entries are read with the recently introduced 'queue_read()'
  and 'complete_read()' functions.

- Symbolic links are created and opened with the 'openlink()' function and
  the link target is read with the 'queue_read()' and 'complete_read()'
  functions and written with the 'write()' function.

- The 'write()' function does not wait for signals anymore. This can have
  the effect that data written by a VFS library user has not been
  processed by a file system server yet when the library user asks for the
  size of the file or closes it (both done with RPC functions at the file
  system server). For this reason, a user of the VFS library should
  request synchronization before calling 'stat()' or 'close()'. To make
  sure that a file system server has processed all write request packets
  which a client submitted before the synchronization request,
  synchronization is now requested at the file system server with a
  synchronization packet instead of an RPC function. Because of this
  change, the synchronization interface of the VFS library is now split
  into 'queue_sync()' and 'complete_sync()' functions.

Fixes #2399
2017-08-28 16:49:38 +02:00
..
doc tool: remove deprecated 'make prepare' mechanism 2016-03-17 17:02:04 +01:00
include Update FatFS port to version 0.13 2017-08-17 11:04:22 +02:00
lib lib/vfs/fatfs: FAT file-system plugin using FatFS library 2017-08-17 11:04:23 +02:00
ports Update FatFS port to version 0.13 2017-08-17 11:04:22 +02:00
recipes depot: update recipe hashes 2017-08-18 10:25:28 +02:00
run run: disable some scripts in autopilot mode 2017-08-18 10:24:48 +02:00
src VFS: nonblocking interface 2017-08-28 16:49:38 +02:00
README README update 2016-08-30 17:24:00 +02:00

This directory contains ports of popular 3rd-party software to Genode.


Usage
-----

The tool './tool/ports/prepare_port' in the toplevel directory automates the
task of downloading and preparing the library source codes. You can select
individual packages that have to be prepared by specifying their base names
(without the version number) as command-line argument. For example, the
following command prepares both the C library and the Freetype library:
! ./tool/ports/prepare_port libc freetype

To compile and link against 3rd-party libraries of the 'libports' repository,
you have to include the repository into the build process by appending it to the
'REPOSITORIES' declaration of your '<build-dir>/etc/build.conf' file.


Under the hood
--------------

For each library, there is a file contained in the 'libports/ports/'
subdirectory. The file is named after the library and contains the
library-specific rules for downloading the source code and installing header
files.


How does 'libports' relate to the other repositories?
-----------------------------------------------------

Most libraries hosted in the 'libports' repository expect a complete C library,
which is provided with the 'libc' package. Please do not forget to prepare the
libc package when using any of the other libports packages. The libc, in turn,
depends on the 'os' repository for its back end. Because the 'os' repository is
the home of the dynamic linker, libraries contained in 'libports' are safe to
assume the presence of the dynamic linker and, thus, should be built as shared
libraries.