This patch adjusts the implementation of the base library and core such
that the code no longer relies on deprecated APIs except for very few
cases, mainly to keep those deprecated APIs in tact for now.
The most prominent changes are:
- Removing the use of base/printf.h
- Removing of the log backend for printf. The 'Console' with the
format-string parser is still there along with 'snprintf.h' because
the latter is still used at a few places, most prominently the
'Connection' classes.
- Removing the notion of a RAM session, which does not exist in
Genode anymore. Still the types were preserved (by typedefs to
PD session) to keep up compatibility. But this transition should
come to an end now.
- Slight rennovation of core's tracing service, e.g., the use of an
Attached_dataspace as the Argument_buffer.
- Reducing the reliance on global accessors like deprecated_env() or
core_env(). Still there is a longish way to go to eliminate all such
calls. A useful pattern (or at least a stop-gap solution) is to
pass the 'Env' to the individual compilation units via init functions.
- Avoiding the use of the old 'Child_policy::resolve_session_request'
interface that returned a 'Service' instead of a 'Route'.
Issue #1987
This patch replaces the former prominent use of pointers by references
wherever feasible. This has the following benefits:
* The contract between caller and callee becomes more obvious. When
passing a reference, the contract says that the argument cannot be
a null pointer. The caller is responsible to ensure that. Therefore,
the use of reference eliminates the need to add defensive null-pointer
checks at the callee site, which sometimes merely exist to be on the
safe side. The bottom line is that the code becomes easier to follow.
* Reference members must be initialized via an object initializer,
which promotes a programming style that avoids intermediate object-
construction states. Within core, there are still a few pointers
as member variables left though. E.g., caused by the late association
of 'Platform_thread' objects with their 'Platform_pd' objects.
* If no pointers are present as member variables, we don't need to
manually provide declarations of a private copy constructor and
an assignment operator to avoid -Weffc++ errors "class ... has
pointer data members [-Werror=effc++]".
This patch also changes a few system bindings on NOVA and Fiasco.OC,
e.g., the return value of the global 'cap_map' accessor has become a
reference. Hence, the patch touches a few places outside of core.
Fixes#3135
This patch removes possible ambiguities with respect to the naming of
kernel-dependent binaries and libraries. It also removes the use of
kernel-specific global side effects from the build system. The reach of
kernel-specific peculiarities has thereby become limited to the actual
users of the respective 'syscall-<kernel>' libraries.
Kernel-specific build artifacts are no longer generated at magic places
within the build directory (like okl4's includes, or the L4 build
directories of L4/Fiasco and Fiasco.OC, or the build directories of
various kernels). Instead, such artifacts have been largely moved to the
libcache. E.g., the former '<build-dir>/l4/' build directory for the L4
build system resides at '<build-dir>/var/libcache/syscall-foc/build/'.
This way, the location is unique to the kernel. Note that various tools
are still generated somewhat arbitrarily under '<build-dir>/tool/' as
there is no proper formalism for building host tools yet.
As the result of this work, it has become possible to use a joint Genode
build directory that is usable with all kernels of a given hardware
platform. E.g., on x86_32, one can now seamlessly switch between linux,
nova, sel4, okl4, fiasco, foc, and pistachio without rebuilding any
components except for core, the kernel, the dynamic linker, and the timer
driver. At the current stage, such a build directory must still be
created manually. A change of the 'create_builddir' tool will follow to
make this feature easily available.
This patch also simplifies various 'run/boot_dir' plugins by removing
the option for an externally hosted kernel. This option remained unused
for many years now.
Issue #2190
Besides adapting the components to the use of base/log.h, the patch
cleans up a few base headers, i.e., it removes unused includes from
root/component.h, specifically base/heap.h and
ram_session/ram_session.h. Hence, components that relied on the implicit
inclusion of those headers have to manually include those headers now.
While adjusting the log messages, I repeatedly stumbled over the problem
that printing char * arguments is ambiguous. It is unclear whether to
print the argument as pointer or null-terminated string. To overcome
this problem, the patch introduces a new type 'Cstring' that allows the
caller to express that the argument should be handled as null-terminated
string. As a nice side effect, with this type in place, the optional len
argument of the 'String' class could be removed. Instead of supplying a
pair of (char const *, size_t), the constructor accepts a 'Cstring'.
This, in turn, clears the way let the 'String' constructor use the new
output mechanism to assemble a string from multiple arguments (and
thereby getting rid of snprintf within Genode in the near future).
To enforce the explicit resolution of the char * ambiguity, the 'char *'
overload of the 'print' function is marked as deleted.
Issue #1987
This patch establishes the sole use of generic headers across all
kernels. The common 'native_capability.h' is based on the version of
base-sel4. All traditional L4 kernels and Linux use the same
implementation of the capability-lifetime management. On base-hw, NOVA,
Fiasco.OC, and seL4, custom implementations (based on their original
mechanisms) are used, with the potential to unify them further in the
future.
This change achieves binary compatibility of dynamically linked programs
across all kernels.
Furthermore, the patch introduces a Native_capability::print method,
which allows the easy output of the kernel-specific capability
representation using the base/log.h API.
Issue #1993
This patch changes the top-level directory layout as a preparatory
step for improving the tools for managing 3rd-party source codes.
The rationale is described in the issue referenced below.
Issue #1082
