genode/doc/road_map.txt

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


This page contains our preliminary 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:/community/wiki/Challenges - Challenges] page collects some of
our ideas to advance Genode in various 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.


2012
####

"Eating our own dog food"
=========================

To emphasize our conviction in the maturity and flexibility of
Genode, we dedicate the year 2012 to the transition of the framework
from a toolkit for building special-purpose operating systems to a
fully functional general-purpose OS. The ambitioned goal of the
Genode developers is to switch to Genode as everyday OS environment
for carrying out productive work. In addition to bringing forward
Genode as general purpose OS, we plan to use it to serve the
genode.org web site.


Ingredients
===========

As developers of low-level system software, we have very specific
expectations from our everyday OS. While we can live happily without
graphical effects and rich multimedia applications, an efficient
Unix-like command-line interface, the presence of development tools,
and system stability are crucial.

We identified the following features as fundamental to our computing
needs:

* VIM
* Shell
* Tool chain (coreutils, gcc, binutils, make, findutils, tar, Tcl,
  expect)
* Persistent file system
* Block-device encryption
* SSH client
* Git client
* GNUPG
* Web browser (also used for email, don't need multi-media stuff)
* PDF viewer
* A way to run a just-compiled Genode sub system
* Interactive Python shell (to be used as a calculator)
* Screen lock
* A fall-back virtual machine running Linux for carrying out sporadic
  work with images (Gimp, Povray, ImageMagick, etc.) and LaTeX, and
  for testing the Linux version of Genode
* Tiled window manager (similar to the wonderful ion3)
* IM client for Jabber

With those fundamentals in place, we will be ready to get started
using the system. This will be the right time to address add-ons
that make the devloper's life more efficient and enjoyable:

* EMACS (for all those that cannot live with VIM)
* Intel wireless driver
* Media player (at least for playing music)
* Thinkpad ACPI support, fan daemon
* Qemu
* Tuxpaint
* High-performance graphics, e.g., via the Wayland display server
* Native mail-user agent (e.g., mutt)
* Additional command-line tools (e.g., mc)

The work on enabling these functionalities on top of Genode will be
scattered over the year. However, for each of the four releases in
2012, we define a particular focus.


Milestones
==========

:February - Release 12.02:
  * File and directory-service interfaces
  * Offline Unix tools (vim, shell, tool chain)
  * PDF viewer

:March - Live CD 12.03:
  * Presenting usage scenarios of Genode as development platform

:May - Release 12.05:
  * Revisiting the support for Linux drivers (USB, sound)
  * Network-based Unix tools (e.g., ssh, Git), IM client
  * Persistent file system

:August - Release 12.08:
  * Tiled window manager and user-interface concept
  * Intel wireless driver
  * Media player
  * Hosting genode.org website on Genode
  * Multi-processor support on NOVA, Pistachio, and Fiasco.OC

:November - Release 12.11:
  * Extended support for Lenovo Thinkpad
  * Cryptography (block-device encryption, GNUPG)
  * Additional tools (emacs, mc)


Additional topics
=================

In addition to the main theme for 2012 described above, Genode will
continue to improve its support for ARM-based platforms.