Hello list,
For this next year I would personally like to see Genode host more network services, so more library support, more configuration idiom, and better support for virtual hosting environments. This is because I would like to migrate a few services that I manage myself, and to make Genode binary distribution self-hosted. Competing with Linux and BSD on performance is quite literally an uphill battle, but I feel there will be some great benefits hidden in Genode's IP stack isolation.
On the subject of configuration, perhaps components could export an XML description of their configuration options over a report session, and then a generic Qt GUI could dynamicly generate a configuration dialog? I am imagining that there could be a nice library to handle both configuration declaration, documentation, and retrieval.
I of course want to polish up Nix and make it a pratical tool for other people to start using. My first priority is to modify the Make build system to build arbitrary library targets and to link components against external objects (actually just those library targets, but at arbitrary locations). The second priority will be to fetch binaries over the network. I am sort of working on the second right now, and the second can supplant the first, but robust self hosting is something that I want to be done by early next year.
My only Linux experience has been with Gento and NixOS, and I really don't want to accidentally create a distribution with unwilling maintainers (like me), so as we go forward I want to do my best to optimize for some sort of modular and anarchistic distribution model.
On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 02:08:17PM -0800, Peter Lindener wrote:
My thought: the Nix pure function based package management system looks interesting.. but I do have some concern that the Genode project might in some way mange to align it self with the emerging standards for application container management... Now I'm not saying that Nix/Genode would not have something say as it joins the container standardization party.. This may be all the more reason to make the effort toward fully functional integration with the emerging OS (potentially bootable) and Application container standards.
If a Nix generated Genode system is going to be embeddable in another OS, I would want to make the interface sharply defined and not integrated, that is there would be minimal crosstalk between the two. I don't know much about what is going on with containerisation but I think want to try and make something that is easy to wrap, not externally integrated, if that makes any sense.
On that point, when I was at NixCon this year I there was some talk of fixing .NET DLL hell and better Windows deployment support, so if all that Windows goop can be tolerated then it will be easy to wiggle Genode in.
Anyway, good hacking to you all next year, Emery