Dear community,
I am very excited about the entire Genode project and looking forward to the upcoming releases. Please keep up the quaterly release cycle. Let me share my thoughts on several issues, which have already been communicated:
* From a newbee's point of view I would say, that you guys are heading into the right direction: I understand the core component to be a kernel abstraction layer. Therfore ABI stability of the core would be awsome - no matter what the kernel is, you could use the same binaries (as long as you are running on the same processor, of course) for drivers and applications. That would be a prerequiste for a working packaging system. * The build process indeed needs a little make-over. I have noticed side effects with the ports, which are hard to describe in detail, as I have not yet fully understood them. Generally speaking the ports (including the drivers) should be built separately from the kernel/core/init. Once again - a stable ABI would help. No matter what the kernel is, you would use the same binaries for the drivers/applications. * A dynamic init component would greatly help, too: reconfigure your system, don't rebuild it. This would also enhance the turmvilla scenario.
Let me also add an idea of mine: for your turmvilla scenaria it might help to provide .iso images with a running system (e.g. using grub-mkrescue) and make them accessible for download. You would then use dd to copy the image on a USB pendrive or an SD card and reboot your computer from this external storage device without installing it on your internal hard drive. You could also use this mechanism to install the system on your internal hard drive, if you have the capability to dynamicly resize your partitions, but you wouldn't have to. The way I see it, a dynamic init component would be a prerequisite.
To say it with the words of Karl Valentin: everything has been said - just not by everyone.
All the best, Florian.