Hello,
btw, would you be comfortable to tell me your name or at least a nick name? I feel a little bad about starting an email with "Hi Nobody". ;-)
Thanks. The Genode documentation does seem somewhat lacking, so could you please help me? What apps are already available for launching Genode programs? I think that finding a good way of launching programs (e.g. through a terminal emulator) would be the first thing that I would need to do.
I think what you are looking for is located at 'os/src/app/cli_monitor', which is a command-line-based application for starting and killing subsystems. To give it a try, please refer to the run script 'gems/run/termina_mux.run', which combines the CLI monitor with a terminal multiplexer called 'terminal_mux'. After booting the system, press control-x to bring up the terminal-mux menu where you can switch between CLI monitor and a log view. In CLI monitor, press tab to see a list of commands. When having started a subsystem (e.g., 'start noux' - note that you can use tab completion), you can switch to the new session by pressing control-x again.
As a nice exercise, you may try to integrate CLI monitor with the window manager (see 'gems/run/wm.run') using the graphical terminal ('gems/src/server/terminal') and nit_fb ('os/src/server/nit_fb').
Also, can executables and libraries be loaded from filesystems? That seems like the solution to avoid needing to build new system images. Is there anything else helpful that I should know about Genode to build it as a general-purpose OS?
Normally, parent processes (like init, launchpad, CLI monitor) obtain binaries and shared libraries as so-called ROM modules. The component fs_rom ('os/src/server/fs_rom') provides a ROM service that hands out files from a file system as ROM modules. By combining it with a file-system server (such as rump_fs), you can start subsystems from a file system.
In general, the best way to go forward is to explore the various run scripts and components to get a tangible feel of which components are there and how to combine them in useful ways.
Have fun! Norman