Genode on the L4ka::Pistachio kernel Dec 18, 2008The new L4ka::Pistachio version of the Genode OS Framework makes the unique features, performance, and stability of the L4::Pistachio kernel available for Genode's software stack. L4ka::Pistachio is the reference implementation of the L4 API version x.2 (also referred to as version 4). With the port of Genode to L4ka::Pistachio conducted by Julian Stecklina, this kernel has become available as a base platform for Genode. The choice of leveraging the special characteristics of L4ka::Pistachio, the Linux kernel, or L4/Fiasco has become just a matter of recompilation. This way, software written against the Genode API can benefit from the long-year research and development invested into L4ka::Pistachio by the L4ka group at the University of Karlsruhe and the DiSy group at the University of New South Wales. We have made the L4ka::Pistachio version of Genode available at our public subversion repository. It will become a regular part of Genode with the upcoming release as scheduled for February. The instructions for building and using Genode with the L4ka::Pistachio kernel are provided at our Genode-on-L4ka::Pistachio wiki page. Public bug tracker available Dec 12, 2008Because we received several requests for a public bug tracker, we have now enabled the public tracker of our Sourceforge project. With the new bug tracker, we want to simplify the sharing and solving of issues related to Genode in a coordinated fashion. If you discover things you like to see improved in our code or documentation, please do not hesitate to share your experiences and ideas by posting a bug. Community resources... Genode OS Framework release 8.11 Nov 21, 2008We are pleased to announce the release 8.11 of the Genode OS Framework introducing a new device-driver API, a C runtime, support for asynchronous notifications, and many improvements of the base API. With the new release 8.11, we are aiming at enabling Genode for real-world applications that require custom device drivers and the reuse of existing code. Among the major improvements are a new device driver API that eases the reuse of existing device drivers and a C runtime that facilitates the reuse of a wealth of existing C library code on Genode. Furthermore, we extended the base API by a number of exciting feature such as support for asynchronous notifications, capability typification, and managed dataspaces. Learn more about all the new features and changes described in our comprehensive release notes... Ready-to-boot Live-CD image available Oct 21, 2008As a teaser for the upcoming release 8.11, we have compiled a Live-CD image showing off the current state of the Genode OS Framework. The Live CD features a fully graphical demonstration that presents the fundamental concepts of the Genode architecture in an interactive fashion. It runs directly on PC hardware and has been tested on Qemu and VirtualBox. Download the Live-CD image... New and exciting challenges ahead Sep 19, 2008To foster the involvement of developers interested in working on Genode, we have enhanced the compilation of future challenges in our Wiki by a number of interesting Genode-related projects to pursue. The Genode architecture inspires a large number of topics for research, experimentation, and development. The challenges section of our Wiki compiles a number of existing ideas. We have now enhanced this compilation by a number of further avenues that we find interesting to explore. For example, exploring Linux process containers, running Genode on FPGA platforms, dynamic linking support, de-privileging VESA, optimizing locking performance, and the port of libSDL. Maybe some of you find these topics as thrilling as we do? If yes, please feel welcome to pick up the ideas to start experimenting with Genode. The Genode build system thoroughly examined Aug 22, 2008In his paper "Empirical Comparison of SCons and GNU Make", Ludwig Hähne pursues the question of which build system to choose for an operating-system project such as ours. For his study, he took the Genode build system as a real-world use case. His results are not only valuable for our particular project but for everyone with an interest in build systems. For the Genode OS Framework, we consider flexibility, usability, reliability, and scalability of the build infrastructure is crucial. When we started project, we created a custom build infrastructure with a particular focus on developer convenience. The effort already paid off for our daily work. The current implementation relies on GNU Make as back end but we are aware that there exist more modern approaches for building software, in particular there is SCons. In his paper, Ludwig Hähne used the Genode build system as a use case to compare SCons and GNU Make. He replicated our build system for the use of SCons as back end and conducted comprehensive experiments. The empirical results presented in the paper reveal a number of interesting issues, for example the limited scalability of the current Genode build system with regard to parallelism, and the memory consumption of SCons when used for large projects. Download the PDF document... Genode ported to Syllable Server OS Aug 22, 2008The developers of the Syllable OS project have ported Genode to the Linux-based server version of Syllable OS. Syllable is a fully fledged free-software operating system that is mainly targeted at desktop computers. Thanks to its long-year steady development, there exists a large base of custom applications. As announced on the website of the Syllable OS project, Genode has been ported to the server version of Syllable OS. Kaj de Vos of the Syllable project also considers the incorporation of Genode into the desktop version of Syllable, which would be a very interesting synergy. Genode OS Framework release 8.08 Aug 06, 2008We released the first official version of the Genode OS Framework. The initial version of the Genode OS Framework is available for download. For naming our releases, we use the Ubuntu version-number scheme, which takes the year as the major number and the month as minor number. Hence, the release is called 8.08. It contains everything needed to execute an interactive graphical demonstration scenario on Linux via libSDL or alternatively via L4/Fiasco on bare PC hardware. Download the latest release... Project website launched Jul 29, 2008The launch of our comprehensive project website genode.org marks the begin of our effort to turn Genode into a community project. The initial release of the Genode OS framework is scheduled for the 6th of August. Today, we proudly launched the website of the Genode project https://genode.org. This website is the central resource for people using or developing the Genode OS framework. It covers the latest news about our progress, architectural and technical documentation, a community-maintained wiki, mailing lists, information on accessing the source-code, and much more. We sincerely hope that this website will draw the attention of people who want bring forward the project together with us. We have scheduled the first official release of the Genode OS framework for the 6th August. Until then, we invite you to test-drive the beta-version of the framework as provided at the download. Genode Labs founded Jul 17, 2008The original authors of the Genode OS Framework start a company dedicated to promoting and advancing Genode. At 15th of May, the two former PhD students of the TU Dresden Operating Systems group who developed the original vision behind the Genode architecture and who created the present implementation of the Genode OS Framework started their company Genode Labs. Genode Labs is committed to bring forward their novel OS technology as a community project and to facilitate its application to real-world problems. |
