Release notes for the Genode OS Framework

The focus of this version was the exploration of various virtualization approaches on Genode, ranging from faithful virtualization via the Vancouver VMM, over paravirtualized L4Android, to OS-level virtualization using Noux, and application-level virtualization as employed for GDB-based user-level debugging. Furthermore, this version introduced a unified new tool chain.

With version 11.08, Genode makes the work with different kernels a seamless experience by streamlining the work flows for all base platforms. Functional additions are new block-device components such as AHCI and SD-card drivers, a partition server, and a VFAT libc back end. Furthermore, the support for ARM-based platforms has been extended to cover Qt4 and L4Linux.

Version 11.05 introduced a new RPC communication API facilitating type safe inter-process communication and ease of use. The platform support for Fiasco.OC has been extended to the complete feature set of Genode. The most significant new features are L4Linux (on Fiasco.OC), an early version of GDB support, ARM RealView PBX device drivers (input, display, network, sdcard), and device I/O support for the MicroBlaze platform.

The addition of Fiasco.OC and our custom MicroBlaze-targeting kernel as well as the upgrade to NOVA v0.3 are the most significant platform-related improvements of the past year. Functionality-wise the most significant feature on version 11.02 is the introduction of the Noux execution environment for running GNU userland software on top of Genode.

Version 10.11 introduced an execution environment for gPXE drivers, a major upgrade to the nitpicker GUI server, a virtual network bridge, a http-based block server, and the first real-world use case for on-demand paging.

With version 10.08, we focused on device drivers, introducing Gallium3D, MadWifi, an ATAPI driver, and a new block-device interface to Genode. Additionally, Qt4 was upgraded to version 4.6.3 and the dynamic linker was extended to support ARM EABI.

Version 10.05 introduced a new configuration concept to subject processes to mandatory access control and to route session requests. Further improvements are the added support for sound output, enhanced integration of OKLinux, the Arora web browser, the port of libSDL, and a new build system.

The main theme of version 10.02 was the improvement of the base platform support of the framework, highlighted by two new base platforms namely NOVA and Codezero, a new management concept for real-time priorities, and extended support for the ARM architecture.

The most prominent additions of this release are the support for Webkit, USB storage, light-weight IP stack, and the paravirtualized variant of Linux called OKLinux. Furthermore, it contains the initial port of the framework to the ARM architecture and a new interface for communicating bulk data between processes.

The version 9.08 brought several refinements such as a new signalling mechanism, a new lock implementation, a new timer service, and various optimizations. The most important new functional additions are a dynamic linker and core extensions to run Linux on top of the OKL4 version.

Genode version 9.05 introduced the proper integration of Qt4 into the main-line source tree, the first parts of USB support, support for the OKL4 kernel as new base platform, and a prototype of OKLinux running on Genode.

With the release 9.02, the Genode OS Framework started to support the L4ka::Pistachio kernel as base platform, introduced the first version of Qt4 on Genode, and added the Linux-2.6 Device Driver Environment including basic networking support.

The release 8.11 introduced a C library ported from FreeBSD, a device-driver API called DDE kit, the signalling framework, the typification of capabilities, region-manager faults, managed dataspaces, and a timed event scheduler.