Roadmap 2017

[Josef Söntgen]

Hello everyone,

looking back at the the roadmap of 2016 it is clear that we missed some
items; nevertheless, I think all in all the year went well. Norman already
noted some observations, namely prioritizing the existing user base
over the future one. Looking back at this week's clean-up efforts I
believe that spending more time on refining the base APIs was indeed the
right decision. Using the new interface or switching the used kernel
seamlessly while testing components feels so natural now and with the
ABI mechanism provides a great foundation for building the infrastructure
for package/deployment management.

That being said, one thing I missed from last year's roadmap discussion
(although I am not sure if that was actually discussed on the ML or only
at a coffee break) is the intention of making more information about
Genode available to and by the community, i.e. in the form of writing
how-tos for specific tasks or just by writing informally about interesting
things that happend while working on Genode. Since parts of the APIs were
or are still in flux I understand that it is difficult to write detailed
articles that are valid for the years to come and probably one of the
reason why one hesitates to spend time on that. That merely leaves the
more informal part. Judging by the huge amount of out-dated information
for <insert your favourite topic here> in all the weblogs on the internet
I am not sure if spending time on that is a good idea either. Than again,
were is the harm in documenting the process of writing a new component or
porting existing software [1] to Genode? After all it should be fine if
the focus is more on the process or the methodology. So, that is a goal of
mine for 2017 — scheduled (emphasis on that) writing about what I do with
Genode in hope that it is useful to somebody or even that others join in
:-)

[1] FWIW http://usr.sysret.de/jws/genode/porting_wishlist.html

Apart from that, I am afraid I have no precise items for this year's
roadmap. I agree with Norman; we need the infrastructure to keep a
running Genode system in sync to the latest changes to provide better
test coverage. I imagine that this will keep us busy for some time and
there are still some items from the old roadmap left that needs to be
addressed as well.


Regards
Josef

-- 
Josef Söntgen
Genode Labs

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