Roadmap 2024

[Michael Grunditz]

On Thu, 21 Dec 2023 at 16:58, Norman Feske <norman.feske at genode-labs.com> wrote:
>
> Hello everyone,
>


> in his most recent posting, Credric already noted that now is the time
> of year again to reflect on our achievements of this year and to
> anticipate topics to pursue next year. To keep up with this fine
> tradition, let me kick off our road-map discussion with my personal
> perspective.
>
>
> Reflections of 2023
>
> As indicated by the overarching theme of the last roadmap "Rocking the
> platforms we support!", Genode's four releases of 2023 had a strong
> focus on low-level platform work. This has been especially visible on
> modern PC platforms like the Gen12 Framework laptop I have under my
> fingertips right now. At the beginning of 2023, Sculpt OS was in
> principle working on this machine, but with compromises that spoiled the
> user experience: fan noise, an erratic touchpad (using the firmware's
> PS/2 emulation), Fn key having no effect, strange issues when
> re-plugging an external display, and no indication of the battery state.
> In the meantime, not only are all these rough edges gone, but we even
> gained the ability to exercise precise control over the machine'
> performance/frequency/temperature/power characteristics using an
> interactive GUI. I think it's fair so say that Genode advanced far
> beyond the state of "working" and has entered the territory of "rocking".
>
> I wish to name four further personal highlights of the year:
>
> First, we got the mobile version of Sculpt OS into the hands of a pilot
> group of users who provided instructive feedback to us. From my
> perspective, the system-update mechanism that I created for this purpose
> turned out to be an almost pivotal point in the evolution of Sculpt OS
> because it reduces the effort and risk of test-driving experimental
> versions to almost zero. It was a pleasure to see how e.g., Johannes
> leveraged this new way of gathering feedback for his IOMMU line of work.
> Providing system images for testing has become a second nature.
>
> Second, the road map for 2023 envisioned Sculpt OS running on our custom
> base-hw kernel on the PC. We identified DMA protection and
> virtualization support as the two remaining showstoppers. With much
> excitement, I followed how both of these deeply technical topics got
> covered over the course of the year.
>
> Third, Goa finally emerged from a personal project of mine to an
> official Genode project led by Johannes. I'm stunned how much the
> project benefited from this change. All of the remaining backlog of my
> vague plans - I'm thinking of the index-project support or bash
> completion - got eventually realized in a way true to the spirit of the
> project. The fate of the Goa tool makes me immensely happy.
>
> Fourth, during the first half of the year, I found myself intensively
> working on Genode's new debug-monitor component, pursuing the idea to
> implement a debugging instrument as a specialized version of init
> augmented with the GDB protocol. This engagement was pretty much
> motivated by a customer. The result of my initial work then seamlessly
> transitioned into the hands of Christian Prochaska who did a marvelous
> job with steadily advancing this line of work towards our joint vision
> of on-target debugging on Sculpt OS. The technical feats
> notwithstanding, I found the frictionless way of collaborating a pure joy.
>
> Besides the highlights above, one topic close to my heart was the
> creation of the dialog API that I designed as necessity to make the code
> of Sculpt's administrative user interface maintainable and easy to
> extend in the longer run.
>
> Plans for 2024
>
> After concentrating so intensively on topics below the surface, I now
> long for reaping user-visible rewards. Speaking of the dialog API just
> mentioned, I see potential in using this new infrastructure for
> Genode-native applications and immediately think of the file manager
> that I already wanted to tackle this year. But I also have plenty of
> ideas to make Sculpt OS more user friendly. What about presenting the
> README files of software packages directly in the GUI? Making the
> component graph scrollable? Allowing the user to select an arbitrary
> directory as a file system to a component? Buttons for saving the
> current deployment or the settings?
>
> Beyond Sculpt's administrative user interface, I'd also like to attend
> the GUI stack. I think of refining the GUI-session interface to remove
> tearing artifacts, to better support desktop-UI-paradigms like
> drag'n'drop, and to explore the opportunity of using nitpicker's
> mechanisms at the application-level, not only at the window-composition
> level.
>
> Hence, I'd condense my ambition for the next year to "Sculpt OS usability".
>
> Device-wise, I'm going to continue my engagement with the PinePhone and
> look forward to the upcoming MNT PocketReform laptop.
>
>
> Above I presented my personal view. How about your's? I would very much
> appreciate you sharing your feedback, ideas, concerns, and plans
> regarding Genode.
>
> How are your interests aligned with the perspective shared above?
>
> Do you see specific pain points that deserve the attention of Genode's
> core developer team?
>
> What is your perspective on Genode's past year's accomplishments?
>
> Can you share your ambitions or even concrete plans?
>
> How and where would you like to see Genode at the end of 2024?
>

I started out 2023 very ambitious, porting Genode to rockchip 3528.
For various reasons I needed to work on other projects. My plan for
2024 is to add RK3399 as a sub target. That means Pinebook Pro and
Pinephone Pro. I guess that those two targets are wanted.

I also would like to see a layer for USB controllers like EHCI and
XHCI. I would be most happy if someone can walk me thru the pc usb
stack. I would like to cut lose EHCI from it and use that in my ports.
I believe that this is better than using linux driver all up to the
actual stack.

 I wish you all happy holidays!

Michael Grunditz