Hi Shakthi,

I am looking at small tasks that can be worked for the Genode project.

Is it possible for anyone to break down larger goals into smaller project outcomes that people can explore or delve into?

thanks for getting involved with the project! There are many areas of the framework, we are working on. A suitable task for you would mainly depend on your interests. Have you already looked through our suggestions at the "Challenges" page of our Wiki?

http://genode.org/community/wiki/Challenges

Which of those general topic would interest you most? If we know your general interests, we could break a long-term goal into smaller steps.

For example, we want to address the read/write access to files. Right now, we only have a ROM service implemented in core, which provides boot-time-present files via a simple interface. In the future, we will need more advanced file operations provided by one or multiple instances of file servers. One of these file servers could use a tar achive as back-end and provide access the the contained files to its client. Because we have not yet finalized the design of the File I/O interfaces, a useful intermediate step would be the creation of a tar-based ROM service --- a process with takes a tar archive from core's ROM service and, in turn, provides the individual files as ROM sessions. This way, we could assemble collections of files (for example, several files used by a particular Qt application) into one tar archive and let the application use the tar ROM-service to access its files. The creation of such a service would teach you a lot about the concepts of Genode and the result would be immediately usable for the project. Because tar is a very simple container format, the implementation of such a service seems to be a reasonable effort.

But as I said, please let us know more about your technical interests. If you like to focus more on device drivers or other topics, there's plenty of work to do as well. .-)

Also, this FPGA graphics is quite interesting. What is the content in the FPGA here, and what is the relation with Genode here? Sorry, if this is off-topic in this list, else I shall contact the Genode-FX list.

http://www.genode-labs.com/news/genode-fx-on-trenz-electronic-industrial-fpg...

Currently, both projects are not related to each other except that they are both developed by Genode Labs. However, we have the vision to bring both projects together in the future. You can learn more about our ideas at the following Wiki page:

http://genode.org/community/wiki/GenodesCoreAsKernelOnTheMicroblazeCPUArchit...

Best regards Norman

Hi Shakthi,

1. POSIX environment.

I am just wondering how POSIX compliance, could possibly bring the concept of translators (as in Hurd) to Genode, or probably that exists already? Please clarify.

http://www.bddebian.com/~hurd-web/hurd/translator/examples/

my proposal was not related to the POSIX environment topic but the mentioned tar-based ROM service could certainly be useful in such a context.

With POSIX enviroment, we mean an execution environment that enables us to port existing plain Unix applications in an easy way to Genode. For example, to make bash, gcc, and vim usable on Genode using a light- weight execution container rather than a full-blown Linux instance (e.g., OKLinux). We are not going the route to enhance Genode's base mechanisms to make the framework POSIX compatible nor are we planning to apply the everything-is-a-file metaphor to Genode. Our API facilitates access to objects (using capabilities as references) rather than operating on files. We will also not support functionality such as 'fork' natively on Genode because Genode provides a different mechanism of process creation and resource accounting.

However, a Genode subsystem may provide such Unix-like abstractions to its children without giving the children the ability to perform native Genode operations (very similar to how L4Linux manages the system calls of its Linux user-level processes). Such a container would enable us to reuse existing Unix software in one or multiple (isolated) POSIX execution containers. The design of such a container is work in progress.

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| But as I said, please let us know more about your technical interests. | If you like to focus more on device drivers or other topics, there's | plenty of work to do as well. .-) --

Sure. This sounds good too. Do we have a list of required device drivers, or protocol stacks?

You asked for small tasks, so I haven't mentioned protocol-stack related work. But because you just asked, it would be very cool to make the BSD TCP/IP stack available to Genode. This TCP/IP stack seems to be very portable because it is used in a number of non-BSD projects such as QNX. But porting it is certainly not a small task. ;-)

Do you have particular interests in the one or the other feature of Genode or do you have a concrete application of Genode in mind? If yes, it would certainly make sense to gear your work towards a goal that is useful for you personally.

Norman