genode/doc/road_map.txt

                             ========
                             Road Map
                             ========


Herein, we lay out our plans for evolving Genode. Progress in addition to this
planning will very much depend on the degree of community support the project
will receive. The
[http:/about/challenges - Challenges] page collects some of our ideas to
advance Genode in various further directions.

The road map is not fixed. If there is commercial interest of pushing the
Genode technology to a certain direction, we are willing to revisit our plans.


Review of 2016
##############

We originally started the year 2016 with the ambition to expand the Genode
community by improving the project's appeal towards system builders and
privacy cautious users. Hence, we started the year with the resolution to
increase our engagement with the wider community, i.e., in the form of
publishing tutorial-like articles. Over the course of the year, however, we
increasingly shifted our focus to architectural and deeply technical topics
instead.

We ultimately prioritized the concerns of the existing Genode users over
extending our user base. The existing users - ourself included - are primarily
interested in API stability and maturity. So we made it our priority to free
Genode from legacies and known architectural limitations. Over the year, we
introduced and cultivated the new framework API that is designed for safety,
achieved cross-kernel binary compatibility, and revised the framework's most
fundamental protocols. Now that the time of sweeping architectural changes
lies behind us, we feel much more confident to approach new users.

Apart from the architectural foundations, among the many other construction
sites of 2016 were the support for the RISC-V architecture, hosting Genode on
top of the Muen separation kernel and the seL4 microkernel, huge device driver
improvements (wifi, graphics, USB, ACPI), VirtualBox 5, virtual networking,
TOR, Rust and many others. Even though we largely deviated from our original
ambition, we are proud of the outcome of the past year.


Big picture for 2017
####################

Our principle direction as declared at he beginning of 2016 remains unchanged
for 2017: Making Genode accessible to the world outside the inner circle
of us enthusiasts. But rather than making this direction the top priority for
now, let us first push the bounds of what the current users and
developers can do with Genode. Hence, for the overall theme of 2017, we
picked: *stability and scalability*. Once Genode reaches the point where it is
routinely used and stressed for various purposes by the "inner circle", a
growing user base will follow naturally and organically.

During our seasonal road-map discussion on our mailing list, we identified the
following topics to address in 2017:

:Application binary interfaces and package management:

  By mid 2016, we attained binary compatibility across the various OS
  kernels supported by Genode, which cleared the way to introduce the notion
  of a Genode application binary interface (ABI). This, in turn, is a
  prerequisite for a scalable handling of binary packages. In 2017, we
  will leverage these foundations in two ways: Allowing the easy creation
  of Genode systems out of packages, and realizing a system-update mechanism
  that allows us to automatically use (and thereby test) the latest versions
  of Genode components on our machines.

:Dynamically reconfigurable subsystems:

  Until now, Genode subsystems were either static (using the init component to
  define them) or relied on a scenario-specific dynamic runtime environment
  (like CLI monitor). By enhancing init to dynamically apply configuration
  changes, the need for special-purpose runtime environments will
  disappear. Scenarios like multi-stage booting, boot-medium detection, or
  a dynamic desktop environment will become dramatically easier to realize.

:Pruning the boot chain:

  Today, Genode on x86 machines still relies on the legacy BIOS boot
  mechanism. We will explore alternatives such as UEFI boot and
  coreboot.

:Asynchronous I/O:

  With Genode 16.11, we successfully removed the last blocking inter-component
  interfaces from the base framework. Still, other parts of the user-level
  infrastructure, in particular the libc still relies on blocking operations. Even
  though we have to offer blocking I/O to user applications for POSIX
  compatibility, the mechanisms used behind the scenes will be changed to leverage
  Genode's asynchronous I/O primitives.

:VirtualBox 5:

  Currently, we maintain a fully-featured version of VirtualBox 4 (including
  USB pass-through, audio, shared folders, clipboard, dynamic desktop resizing)
  and a pretty basic version of VirtualBox 5 (without those integration
  features). In 2017, we will replace VirtualBox 4 by a fully featured
  version of VirtualBox 5.

:Updated tool chain and Qt5:

  With version 17.05, we want to experiment with the idea of providing a
  long-term supportable version of the framework in addition to the quarterly
  releases. Consequently, at the time of its release, this version should use
  a modern tool chain that will remain current for the foreseeable future of
  Genode's regular development. The same holds true for Qt5.

:Hardware-accelerated graphics on Intel:

  Graphics is an important element for many use cases for Genode on x86-based
  platforms. Even though we experimented with hardware-accelerated 3D
  graphics
  [http://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/10.08#Gallium3D_and_Intel_s_Graphics_Execution_Manager - many years ago],
  the current GUI stack is still based on software-based rendering.
  We want to overcome this limitation this year.

:Native work flows:

  In the regularly used "Turmvilla" scenarios, most work flows require the
  use of Linux in a virtual machine. Over the course of the year, we want
  to move the most important work flows (namely software development and
  the work with emails) to Genode natively. As a precondition,
  we need to improve the usability of our GUI infrastructure by adding
  support for tiled and tabbed windows, and virtual desktops.

:Storage:

  There are several storage-related topics that need our attention to
  realize the goals stated above to our satisfaction. This includes the
  performance and stability of the used file-system stack, and the provision
  of file-based backup and cryptographic functionality.

:Genode-based cloud appliances:

  We want to widen the application scope of Genode by enabling users to
  easily deploy Genode scenarios on Xen-based cloud platforms.


Milestones for 2017
###################

In the following, we present a rough schedule of the planned work. As usual,
it is not set in stone. If you are interested in a particular line of work,
please get in touch.


February - Release 17.02
========================

* Application binary interfaces (ABI)
* Dynamic init
* VFS: asynchronous I/O


May - Release 17.05
===================

* Removal of deprecated APIs
* Updated tool chain
* Updated Qt5
* Easy creation of Genode systems out of packages
* Feature-complete VirtualBox 5
* Update of the Genode Foundations book


August - Release 17.08
======================

* Hardware-accelerated graphics on Intel-based platforms
* Support for the seL4 kernel on x86_64 and ARM
* Use of Genode for cloud-computing appliances (deployment, virtio)
* GUI: tiled and tabbed window management, virtual desktops


November - Release 17.11
========================

* Revised boot concept (UEFI, trimming the boot chain)
* Storage: backup, improved file-system support
* Native work flows for email and development work
* Test automation for interactive system scenarios