Hello Genodians, I have spent the last few months familiarizing myself with the base API and creating some sample projects. While I am relatively new to Genode, I had a few ideas during my initial exploration for areas to which I might contribute.
[1] When I was just starting out, my biggest challenge was the build system. While going through some of the basic examples / demos, I developed a rather simplistic Nix wrapper around the Genode build system (see [a]). Despite its simplicity, it greatly sped up my development time. For those that aren't familiar, Nix is a language for creating reproducible builds (see [b]). I was able to get several of my co-workers spun up on my projects in a single command. Since Nix has a docker image, creating development container images for those that did not already have Nix was trivial. I think there is a lot of potential here for decreasing the barrier to entry for playing with Genode demo scenarios, and generally making Genode builds more reproducible. In my cursory research, I came across at least one past attempt at porting the Genode build system to Nix and vice versa (see [c]), as well as a mailing list discussion from almost a decade ago (see [d]). Has anyone continued these efforts? If no one is currently working on this, would it be something that others would be interested in using? I have my own ideas for how I would implement this, but I would like to get input from more experienced members of the community. [2] I also want to ask about system composition abstractions. XML ROMs make sense as a runtime representation since they are easy to parse, but they make it difficult to write complex system configurations by hand. Are there any current efforts to create build and/or runtime abstractions for system composition? From my naive perspective, this also seems like a wonderful place to introduce a high-level package manager to create and deploy modular subsystems (if one doesn't already exist). I also wonder if there are any opportunities here for formal modelling and analysis of a configuration. [3] Finally, I want to ask about any previous or planned work to formally verify the correctness of important Genode components (e.g, core, init) and the Genode API. Are there any challenges that make this infeasible? There are several follow-up questions I would have before going in this direction, but I would once again like to get input before adding my thoughts. To summarize: 1. Has anyone been working on porting Genode to Nix (or vice versa)? 2. Is anyone working on a build and/or runtime abstraction for system composition? 3. Is there any ongoing or planned work toward formal verification of Genode components (e.g., core, init, etc.)? I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts! Best, Zachary Zollers [a] https://github.com/zgzollers/nixpkgs-genode [b] https://nixos.org/ [c] https://discourse.nixos.org/t/genodepkgs-extending-nixpkgs-nixos-to-genode/8779 [d] https://lists.genode.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/users@lists.genode.org/message/QUNDVXAHGSSI5BA2PEB573DU67ZFKDOX/ _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@lists.genode.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-le...@lists.genode.org Archived at https://lists.genode.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/users@lists.genode.org/message/WBKYRPJNYEBOMQ4WRTSIZZ2HQREJZ6YU/
