Hello,
thanks for all the suggestions for our road map. I have summarized the discussion and updated the road-map on our website at
http://genode.org/about/road-map
For your convenience, here is the plan:
"Eating our own dog food" =========================
To emphasize our conviction in the maturity and flexibility of Genode, we dedicate the year 2012 to the transition of the framework from a toolkit for building special-purpose operating systems to a fully functional general-purpose OS. The ambitioned goal of the Genode developers is to switch to Genode as everyday OS environment for carrying out productive work. In addition to bringing forward Genode as general purpose OS, we plan to use it to serve the genode.org web site.
Ingredients ===========
As developers of low-level system software, we have very specific expectations from our everyday OS. While we can live happily without graphical effects and rich multimedia applications, an efficient Unix-like command-line interface, the presence of development tools, and system stability are crucial.
We identified the following features as fundamental to our computing needs:
* VIM * Shell * Tool chain (coreutils, gcc, binutils, make, findutils, tar, Tcl, expect) * Persistent file system * Block-device encryption * SSH client * Git client * GNUPG * Web browser (also used for email, don't need multi-media stuff) * PDF viewer * A way to run a just-compiled Genode sub system * Interactive Python shell (to be used as a calculator) * Screen lock * A fall-back virtual machine running Linux for carrying out sporadic work with images (Gimp, Povray, ImageMagick, etc.) and LaTeX, and for testing the Linux version of Genode * Tiled window manager (similar to the wonderful ion3) * IM client for Jabber
With those fundamentals in place, we will be ready to get started using the system. This will be the right time to address add-ons that make the devloper's life more efficient and enjoyable:
* EMACS (for all those that cannot live with VIM) * Intel wireless driver * Media player (at least for playing music) * Thinkpad ACPI support, fan daemon * Qemu * Tuxpaint * High-performance graphics, e.g., via the Wayland display server * Native mail-user agent (e.g., mutt) * Additional command-line tools (e.g., mc)
The work on enabling these functionalities on top of Genode will be scattered over the year. However, for each of the four releases in 2012, we define a particular focus.
Milestones ==========
:February - Release 12.02: * File and directory-service interfaces * Offline Unix tools (vim, shell, tool chain) * PDF viewer
:March - Live CD 12.03: * Presenting usage scenarios of Genode as development platform
:May - Release 12.05: * Revisiting the support for Linux drivers (USB, sound) * Network-based Unix tools (e.g., ssh, Git), IM client * Persistent file system
:August - Release 12.08: * Tiled window manager and user-interface concept * Intel wireless driver * Media player * Hosting genode.org website on Genode * Multi-processor support on NOVA, Pistachio, and Fiasco.OC
:November - Release 12.11: * Extended support for Lenovo Thinkpad * Cryptography (block-device encryption, GNUPG) * Additional tools (emacs, mc)
Additional topics =================
In addition to the main theme for 2012 described above, Genode will continue to improve its support for ARM-based platforms.
If you have further ideas, please do not hesitate to discuss them on the list. The road map is not carved in stone.
Cheers Norman