========================================= Genode Labs Newsletter - April / May 2018 ========================================= Content 1. New Genode mailing list 2. Sculpt for The Curios (TC) 3. Genode OS Framework 18.05 released 4. Hack'n'Hike 2018 in review 1. New Genode mailing list -------------------------- Since we started the Genode project in 2008, our mailing list is the primary point of communication within the community. The mailing list and its archive used to be hosted by Sourceforge. We are grateful for this year-long service but ultimately found that our project has outgrown this solution. In particular, we became uncomfortable with the delivery of ads in the footer of messages, and we experienced outages without any chance to diagnose and fix issues by ourself. For this reason, we decided to move the mailing list to our own infrastructure now. Please note that this is a new mailing list. Subscribers of the old list are not automatically subscribed to the new one. If you are interested in following discussions around Genode please subscribe to the new mailing list: https://genode.org/community/mailing-lists 2. Sculpt for The Curios (TC) ----------------------------- The Year of Sculpt - as announced on our road map - moves forward at a rapid pace. Six months after the first Genode-Labs-internal version, the Sculpt OS has evolved to a surprisingly flexible and easy-to-use system. The starting point is a tiny disk image of about 20 MiB that contains - among the kernel and several drivers - an interactive user interface that empowers the user to customize almost all aspects of the system including the installation, deployment, and configuration of additional software. Those customizations can be made persistent on a USB stick, a SATA disk, or a NVMe device. Since Genode's custom package manager does not rely on a central package repository, the deployed software can originate from any number of software providers whereby the installation is guarded by cryptographic signatures. The interaction of the installed software with the rest of the system is defined at an intuitive level of abstraction, which puts the user in ultimate control. If this makes you curious, please follow the steps given in the documentation: https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-tc 3. Genode OS Framework 18.05 released ------------------------------------- The version 18.05 was just released today. It contains countless of improvements motivated by Sculpt OS. For example, it introduces the ability to display text in a resolution-independent way, allows for the dynamic adjustment of user-level network routing, supports the flexible detection and management of partitions and file systems, and is able to drive USB storage devices from a great variety of vendors. Besides the focus on Sculpt, the new version features the initial support for the Java programming language via a port of OpenJDK's HotSpot VM. Also, the Ada language support received much attention. Hardware-wise, the new version improves the drivers for NXP i.MX System-on-Chips, adds a new driver for non-volatile storage (NVMe) devices, and embraces the modern ECAM/MMCONF mechanism for accessing the PCI configuration space on PC hardware. Furthermore, the seL4 kernel and the Muen kernel have been updated to new versions. Finally, the release is complemented with a new revision of the Genode Foundations book (PDF) that incorporates the evolutionary changes of the framework during the past year. The entire picture is presented in detail by the release documentation of version 18.05: https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/18.05 4. Hack'n'Hike 2018 in review ----------------------------- End of may, we as a group of 15 enthusiastic hackers and hikers gathered once again in the beautiful Zittauer Gebirge. Like every year, the attendees were a healthy mix of guests and Genode core developers, conducting a great variety of projects and enjoying the community spirit. Among the hot topics during the weekend were the use of Ada/SPARK for Genode components, the final touches of Sculpt TC, the use of a home router as hardware platform, ARM experiments, USB host- controller adventures, and the first steps towards a self-hosted SDK. The daylight was spent hiking to the Nonnenfelsen and Dackelfelsen, with climbing adventures in the local Kletterpark, and relaxed barbecue. We'd like to thank all participants for the great time we had together! About the newsletter -------------------- If you have friends or colleagues who might be interested in our projects, we would appreciate you to forward this email. If you received this newsletter as a forwarded email, you may subscribe to the newsletter here: https://genode-labs.com/newsletter In the case of receiving this newsletter unintended, you can cancel your subscription at any time by replying to this email with the subject set to "unsubscribe". Best regards -- Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske Genode Labs https://www.genode-labs.com/ · https://genode.org/ https://twitter.com/GenodeLabs · /ˈdʒiː.nəʊd/ Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth
