What is going on for february release?

[Norman Feske]

Hello,

this is a short follow-up on my last email regarding the status of the
release.

>> -IOMMU support on NOVA
> 
> This topic is being worked on by Alexander Böttcher. See here:
> 
>   https://github.com/alex-ab/genode/commits/nova_iommu_v0

The design has been subsequently refined in order to spare driver
developers the hassle to distinguish the presence of an IOMMU from
non-IOMMU case manually. The current version is ready to be merged. If
you want to have a look:

  https://github.com/alex-ab/genode/commits/nova_iommu_v4

There is work in progress to adapt our base device drivers to the new
facility such that those drivers (e.g., AHCI, USB) will function well on
systems with IOMMU enabled.

>> -First steps of user-interface concept
>> --UI concept for pleasant working environment
>> --Tiled window manager
>> --Terminal improvements (e.g., scroll buffer)
>> --Noux improvements (e.g., signals)
> 
> These points remain largely unaddressed. I expect that we will see
> progress on them after FOSDEM. I will certainly be involved in these topics.

Due to an illness (that hit me just after returning from FOSDEM), I was
not able to dedicate much implementation work to these points. However,
the design of a possible solution is slowly forming in my head. :-)

Instead of working on these points to come up with a half-baked
solution, I used the remaining time to address some long-standing issues
(in the most literal sense possible: I fixed issue #1):

  https://github.com/genodelabs/genode/issues/1

Also, I took the chance to reorganize the libraries that are forming the
base API implementation:

  https://github.com/genodelabs/genode/issues/18

https://github.com/genodelabs/genode/commit/fae63f4fa9df237a5fa3d658b870def17e82f265

Both topics are quite far-reaching and come with API changes. The best
time to merge such changes is shortly prior a release because this way,
both people who use the git master branch and people who use the release
version will use the same API.

>> -Improved x86 virtualization support
>> --Improved virtualization support (Vancouver on NOVA)
> 
> There is an open pull request about this topic:
> 
>   https://github.com/genodelabs/genode/pull/582
> 
> Udo Steinberg agreed to revisit the patches to incorporate my feedback.
> After that, we will integrate them into staging and document and test
> the new version of the Vancouver VMM.

Thanks to Udo for reworking the patch series! I further streamlined the
commits to make them fit well with our code base and merged the result
into the master branch.

For wrapping up the release, we will merge the IOMMU code and the
base-hw Arndale code next, and write up the release notes.

Regards
Norman

-- 
Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske
Genode Labs

http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org

Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden
Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth