Genode News
Genode OS Framework release 10.02
Succeeding the previous feature-rich release, the Genode project took the chance to focus on extending the base-platform support of the framework. We are happy to report that we were able to complement the already broad range of supported kernels by two new modern microkernels namely NOVA and Codezero, both first released in 2009. Thereby, Genode provides a unified user-level infrastructure that runs directly on those kernels as well as on Linux (32 bit and 64 bit), OKL4v2 (x86 and ARMv4), L4/Fiasco, and L4ka::Pistachio. For developers creating microkernel-based applications, the framework hides the intricacies of the respective kernel. But it also strives to make the unique capabilities of each base platform accessible to the user. For example, with the new release, we made the real-time scheduling of OKL4 and L4ka::Pistachio available to Genode applications.
Download the latest release...
Road map 2010
With the start of the new year, its time to pause for a moment, looking back the progress we made during 2009, and planning the next steps. The overall theme of 2009 was the creation of fundamental base functionality to make the framework usable for practical applications. We are proud when revisiting the long list of achievements introduced with the four releases of the past year: Support for the OKL4 and l4ka::Pistachio kernels, Linux device-driver environment, networking, USB input and storage, dynamic linking, Qt4 including Webkit, and support for a paravirtualized Linux kernel. With this strong foundation in place, its time to raise the bar again. Please read on about our updated road map for 2010...
Genode OS Framework release 9.11
For the project, the current release is a major leap towards the goal of Genode to become a general-purpose OS platform. The addition of OKLinux - a paravirtualized Linux kernel - to the distribution makes it possible to run security-sensitive native Genode applications side by side with unmodified Linux binaries. This particular version of Linux has no direct hardware access but rather uses native Genode services as virtual hardware devices. With respect to available device classes, we extended Genode's support to cover USB storage and networking drivers. Moreover, the porting of the Light-weight IP stack and Q4/Webkit now enables developers to create web applications on top of Genode. Beside the new functionality, Genode's platform scope was broadened by initial support of the ARM architecture.
Read on about these and all additional changes in more detail in the release notes for Genode 9.11...Genode Live Demonstration 2009-09
The Live CD features the graphical demonstration of the Genode architecture, known from the last Live CD. But this time it doesn't run on L4/Fiasco only. It also can be started on top of the L4 microkernels OKL4 and Pistachio. Moreover, it features QT4 application support and a para-virtualized Linux version running on top of Genode. The Live CD runs directly on PC hardware and has been tested on Qemu/KVM and VirtualBox.
Edit: We have further improved the performance of the L4/Fiasco and L4ka::Pistachio demos, and refined the presentation of the Qt4 demo. Download the updated Live-CD image...
Genode OS Framework release 9.08
We have released the version 9.08 of the Genode OS Framework. The general theme of this release has been refinement. We are particularly happy for having resolved long standing concerns about our locking and signalling implementations. The actual focus of our work during the last three months was the unification of all supported base platforms resulting in many generalizations of former platform-specific code. We managed to bring the code for the Linux version very much in line with the supported L4 platforms, reducing platform-specific source-code complexity and maintenance costs. Feature-wise, the most important news are the port of the dynamic linker from FreeBSD, the added support for thread-local storage, a much improved timer service, and core extensions for running Linux on the OKL4 version of Genode.
Read on about all the changes in the release notes for Genode 9.08...
Document about Genode's native Qt4 port available
Qt4 is a popular and versatile C++ framework for developing platform-independent GUI applications. In addition to GUI-related functionality, Qt4 covers a comprehensive library of data structures and platform abstractions. It is widely used for both commercial and open-source applications, most prominently, it serves as the foundation of the KDE project.
Since the release 9.05, the official distribution of Genode supports Qt4 as a regular feature. The document "Portierung von Qt auf Genode" (german) describes the challenging endeavor of porting this high-complexity C++ framework to Genode. Major problems to overcome had been the missing C libary (at the time when the project started), the integration of the Qt4 project files with Genode's build system, the adaption of Qt4 to the basic primitives provided by Genode, and the integration of Qt4 with Genode's GUI. In addition to the mentioned technical insights, the document evaluates the achieved solution with respect to compatibility and maintainability. Download the PDF...
Genode OS Framework release 9.05
The new release continues the general theme to enhance our potential user base by broadening the base-platform support and, at the same time, extending the functionality of the framework. We have now added the OKL4 kernel to the supported base platforms. OKL4 is a commercial-grade kernel developed by Open Kernel Labs and primarily targeted at embedded systems. Along with this integration work, we were able to further advance the portability of Genode by generalizing much of former platform-dependent code. On the feature side, we introduced the first parts of a USB stack, making Linux' USB host-controller drivers and a human-interface device driver available on Genode. As outlined in the release notes, there is also good progress on executing Linux as a sub system of Genode. Furthermore, we have now seamlessly integrated the support for the Qt application framework into the Genode source tree and bumped the version to 4.5.1.
Read on about the new features described int the release notes...
Download the release 9.05 of the Genode OS Framework...
Bringing Genode to the OKL4 kernel
With the port of Genode to the OKL4 kernel, we have taken another step to reach a broader user base of the framework. In contrast to the already supported microkernels L4ka::Pistachio and L4/Fiasco, the OKL4 kernel developed by Open Kernel Labs is largely deployed in commercial settings. Even though being a member of the L4 family of kernels, OKL4 has a much modernized kernel API that fits quite well with the Genode architecture. For example, OKL4 does not rely on an in-kernel mapping database, frees the IPC operation from wall-clock timeouts, supports asynchronous notifications, and provides kernel support for user-level synchronization.
In the process of porting Genode to OKL4 version 2.1, we took the chance of generalizing a lot of former L4-specific code such that the remaining platform-specific code is now in the order of less than 2,000 lines of code for each kernel platform. To ease future ports of the frameworks to other kernels, we have documented our work in detail. If you are interested in learning more about the OKL4 kernel from our perspective, or if you like to dive right into the inner parts of the Genode OS Framework, read on about Bringing the Genode OS Framework to the OKL4 kernel...
The OKL4 version is available at our subversion repository and will be included in the upcoming release 9.05. For further information about building and using Genode on OKL4, please refer to the new Genode on OKL4 Wiki page...
Genode on 64-bit Linux kernels
From the ground up, Genode was co-developed supporting Linux and L4 as base platforms but the both versions were restricted to the 32-bit x86 architecture. We have now expanded the Linux support to 64 bit. Because most of the adaptions of Genode to 64 bit took place in generic code, we are now well prepared to support future 64-bit versions of L4 kernels as well. The patch for adding 64 bit support supplied by Christian Prochaska is now included in the current version of the Genode subversion repository.
Access the Genode subversion repository...
Christian Prochaska joins our project as regular developer
As the original developer of the Qt4 port for Genode, Christian Proachaska has gained long-time experience with running complex software on top of Genode. In the future, he will leverage his skills to further advance his Qt4-related work. Furthermore, he strives to improve the framework towards general-purpose computing. Currently, he is working on adding 64-bit support to Genode.
Genode OS Framework release 9.02
Whereas the focus of the previous release 8.11 was the refinement of Genode's base API and the creation of the infrastructure needed to build real-world applications, the new release 9.02 is focused on functional enhancements in two directions. The first direction is broadening the number of possible base platforms for the framework. At present, most microkernels bring along a custom user land, which is closely tied to the particular kernel. Our vision is to establish Genode as a common ground for developing applications, protocol stacks, and device drivers in such a way that the software becomes easily portable among different kernels. This release makes Genode available on the L4ka::Pistachio kernel. Hence, software developed with the Genode API can now run unmodified on Linux/x86, L4/Fiasco, and L4ka::Pistachio. In the second direction, we are steadily advancing the functionality available on top of Genode. With this release, we introduce a basic networking facility and support for native Qt4 applications as major new features. Thanks to Genode's portability, these features become automatically available on all supported base platforms.
Read on about the new features described in the release notes...
Download the release 9.02 of the Genode OS Framework...
Port of libSDL to Genode
The Simple Directmedia Layer library (libSDL) is a very popular cross-platform media library that provides hardware abstractions for graphics, input devices, and sound. It is often used as back end for games, emulators, and media players. Also the Linux version of Genode relies on the hardware abstractions provided by libSDL.
As announced on the Genode mailing list, libSDL has been ported to Genode. At the current stage, the port supports the video subsystem and the input handling for mouse and keyboard. With libSDL now becoming available for Genode, it becomes much easier to make the wealth of libSDL-based applications available on our platform. Read the announcement...
Genode on the L4ka::Pistachio kernel
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. Learn more about Genode on L4ka::Pistachio...
Public bug tracker available
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
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...
Download the release 8.11 of the Genode OS Framework...
Ready-to-boot Live-CD image available
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
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
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
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
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
Today, we proudly launched the website of the Genode project http://www.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 section.
Genode Labs founded
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.
