release_notes-17-11.txt

              ===============================================
              Release notes for the Genode OS Framework 17.11
              ===============================================

                               Genode Labs



In contrast to most releases, which are focused on one or two major themes,
the development during the release cycle of version 17.11 was almost entirely
driven by the practical use of Genode as a day-to-day OS by the entire staff
of Genode Labs. The basis of this endeavor is an evolving general-purpose
system scenario - dubbed "sculpt" - that is planned as an official feature
for the next release 18.02. The name "sculpt" hints at the approach to start
with a minimalistic generic live system that can be interactively shaped
into a desktop scenario by the user without any reboot. This is made possible
by combining Genode's unique dynamic reconfiguration concept with the
recently introduced package management, our custom GUI stack, and the many
ready-to-use device-driver components that we developed over the past years.

By stressing Genode in such a dynamic and interactive fashion, we identified
and smoothened many rough edges and usability shortcomings, ranging from the
use of client-provided pointer shapes, the proper handling of keyboard
modifiers, mouse acceleration, over the configuration of the user-level
networking facilities, to improvements of the file-system support. Since the
sculpt scenario is based on Genode's custom package-management concept
introduced in
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/17.05#Package_management - version 17.05],
it motivated the packaging of all components required by this system scenario.
Altogether, there are now over 150 ready-to-use depot archives available.

At the platform level, the release unifies the boot concept across all
supported x86 microkernels and offers the option to boot 64-bit kernels via
UEFI. For both UEFI and legacy boot, Genode consistently uses GRUB2 now.

Feature-wise, the most prominent topics are the native support of game-console
emulators based on libretro, the ability to resize libSDL-based applications
like avplay, and the further cultivation of Nim as implementation language
for native Genode components.


Base framework and OS-level infrastructure
##########################################

Virtual file system and C runtime
=================================

The VFS and C runtime received improvements in several respects. First, we
reintegrated the resolver library back into the libc library as it is an
essential feature for network applications. The former split was an ancient
artifact we implemented when integrating the lxip network stack as an optional
alternative to lwip. Speaking of ancient features, we also remove the rcmd
code from libc. This feature for remote-shell access is not used in modern
environments. The VFS server was adjusted to handle incomplete calls to
'stat()' correctly.


NIC-router improvements
=======================

Genode's user-level network-routing component was originally introduced in
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/16.08#Virtual_networking_and_support_for_TOR - version 16.08]
and refined in
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/16.11#Further_improved_virtual_networking - version 16.11].
In the current release, the NIC router has received two minor improvements
regarding MAC addresses and ARP handling. In addition, it now has the ability
to act as DHCP server or client for each configured domain.

Let's first have a look at the minor changes. The MAC addresses that the NIC
router allocates on behalf of its NIC clients are now of the proper type:
"local" and "individual" and this way, conform to the ARP protocol. The NIC
router now also considers ARP requests for foreign IP addresses coming from a
domain. If there is no gateway configured for the domain, the NIC router
itself jumps in as gateway and answers those requests with its IP address.
Thus, if you have an individual gateway in a subnet behind the NIC router,
make sure to have the gateway attribute in the according '<domain>' tag set.

The new DHCP server functionality is activated for a domain by the new
'<dhcp-server>' sub-tag of the '<domain>' tag:

! <domain name="vbox" interface="10.0.1.1/24">
!     <dhcp-server ip_first="10.0.1.80"
!                  ip_last="10.0.1.100"
!                  ip_lease_time_sec="3600"
!                  dns_server="10.0.0.2"/>
!     ...
! </domain>

The attributes 'ip_first' and 'ip_last' define the available IPv4 address
range whereas the lifetime of an IPv4 address assignment is defined by the
'ip_lease_time_sec' attribute in seconds. The 'dns_server' attribute is
optional and declares the IPv4 address the NIC router shall state in the
DNS-server option of DHCP. The DNS server may be located within a foreign
subnet.

When used as a DHCP server, the NIC router provides the following DHCP options
to its clients: message type, server IP (set to the NIC routers IP), subnet
mask, IP lease time, router IP (set to the NIC routers IP), DNS server (if
configured), and broadcast address.

If you want the NIC router to act as DHCP client at a domain, simply omit the
interface attribute in the '<domain>' tag. In this case, the router tries to
dynamically receive and maintain an IP configuration for the affected domain.
Make sure that your DHCP server provides the following DHCP option fields to
the NIC router: message type, server IP, subnet mask, IP lease time, and
router IP.

Also note that the NIC router drops all packets not related to its DHCP client
functionality at a domain that (currently) has no IP configuration. As soon as
the domain achieves to get a valid IP configuration, the router switches to
the normal behavior.


New driver-manager subsystem
============================

In traditional Genode system scenarios, the selection and configuration of the
used device drivers are defined at system-integration time. This approach
works fine whenever the hardware platform targeted by a given scenario and the
use case of the scenario is well known in advance. But it does not scale up to
general-purpose computing where one system image must be usable on diverse
machines, and the concrete use cases are up to the end user.

The new _driver-manager_ subsystem composes existing Genode components within
a dynamic subsystem. It spawns and configures device drivers that are
fundamental for an interactive system on demand. When integrated as a
building block in a Genode system, it provides the following feature set:

* It contains the ACPI-discovery component and the platform driver.

* It hosts and automatically configures the USB driver such that USB storage
  and vendor-specific devices become available to user-specific driver
  components residing outside the drivers subsystem (e.g., a VirtualBox
  instance that drives an individual USB stick). The list of present USB
  devices and the current USB-driver configuration are provided as a
  'usb_devices' and 'usb_drv.config' report respectively. Furthermore, the USB
  driver is configured to drive human input devices (HID) and provides the
  event stream as an input service.

* It spawns the AHCI driver and produces a list of present devices as a
  'block_devices' report.

* It hosts a PS/2 driver as well as an input-filter that incorporates the
  input-event streams originating from the PS/2 and USB HID drivers. The
  default configuration generates character events based on a configurable
  keyboard layout and key repeat, and includes scroll-wheel emulation and
  pointer acceleration for a PS/2 mouse (or, more importantly, the trackpoint
  of Lenovo laptops).

* It responds to changes of the 'capslock' and 'numlock' states, which are
  managed outside of the driver subsystem. Both states are consumed by the USB
  and PS/2 drivers to drive the keyboard-indicator LEDs. The 'numlock' state
  is furthermore used to toggle key re-mappings performed by the input filter.
  The 'capslock' state is incorporated into the modifier state as processed by
  the input-filter's character generator.

The new subsystem comes in the form of a depot package, which depends on all
required components. Internally, it employs a dynamic init instance as a tool
to start and manage driver components on demand. The actual management
component is a simple program of about 500 lines of code that merely consumes
reports and produces configurations. It is so simple that it does not even
perform any dynamic memory allocation.

The new subsystem is present in the _gems_ repository and illustrated by the
_gems/run/driver_manager.run_ script. It is also used as one cornerstone of
the forthcoming general-purpose "sculpt" scenario mentioned in the
introduction.


Configuration changes of acpica and platform driver
===================================================

Up to now, the acpica application was started up-front in most scenarios to
get exclusive access to all PCI devices during initialization. Afterwards
the platform driver took over the device access and announced the platform
service. With the upcoming "sculpt" scenario, the desire arose to start the
acpica application at a later stage, when the platform driver is already
running. We adjusted the acpica and platform driver configuration slightly to
cover this use case also.


New ROM-filter abilities
========================

The ROM-filter component is able to transform XML data from multiple ROM
modules into a new ROM module. It is prominently used to generate component
configurations depending on global system state. The current release makes
this tool more flexible by allowing verbatim copies of input content into
the output XML node as well as the use of input content as attribute values.


New user-input processing capabilities
======================================

In [https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/17.02#Input-event_filter - version 17.02],
we introduced a modular input-processing component called _input-filter_.
The current release adds the following features to this component:

:incorporating modifier state from external ROMs:

  By adding a '<rom name="...">' node into '<modN>' node of a chargen-filter,
  it is now possible to incorporate the content of the given ROM module into
  the modifier state. If the ROM module contains a top-level node with the
  attribute 'enabled' set to "yes", the modifier is enabled. This is useful
  for handling a system-global capslock state.

:scroll-wheel emulation:

  The new '<button-scroll>' filter turns relative motion events into wheel
  events while a special button (i.e., the middle mouse button) is pressed.
  The button and rate of generated wheel events can be configured per axis via
  the sub nodes '<vertical>' and '<horizontal>'. The button of each axis can
  be specified via the 'button' attribute. By default, "BTN_MIDDLE" is used.
  The rate of generated wheel events can be defined by the 'speed_percent'
  attribute. A value of "100" uses relative motion vectors directly as wheel
  motion vectors. In practice, this results in overly fast wheel motion. By
  lowering the value, the rate can be reduced to practical levels. By
  specifying a negative value, the direction of the generated wheel motion can
  be inverted.

  The consumed relative motion events are filtered out from the event stream
  such that pointer movements are inhibited while the wheel emulation is
  active. All other events are passed along unmodified.

:pointer acceleration:

  The new '<accelerate>' filter applies acceleration to relative motion
  values. The 'max' attribute defines the maximum value added to the incoming
  motion values. The 'sensitivity_percent' attribute scales incoming motion
  values before applying the (potentially non-linear) acceleration function.
  The 'curve' attribute defines the degree of non-linearity of the
  acceleration. The value "0" corresponds to a linear function whereas the
  maximum value "255" applies a curved function. The default value is "127".


Keyboard-LED support for PS/2 and USB HID
=========================================

Both the PS/2 and the USB drivers have gained the new '<config>' attributes
'capslock_led="no"', 'numlock_led="no"', and 'scrlock_led="no"' (with their
default values shown). The attributes can have the values "no" (LED is turned
off), "yes" (LED is turned on), or "rom". In the latter case, the driver reads
the LED state from a dedicated ROM module called "capslock", "numlock", or
"scrlock" respectively. The ROM module is expected to have a top-level XML
node with the attribute 'enabled' set to "yes" or "no". The drivers reflect
this state information by driving the corresponding keyboard-mode indicator
LEDs.


Revised Nitpicker GUI server
============================

Driven by use cases like the "sculpt" scenario mentioned in the introduction,
the Nitpicker GUI server and its helper components received an overhaul.

Besides modernizing the implementation according to our today's best
practices, we succeeded in removing the focus handling as the last remaining
builtin policy from the GUI server to an external component, thereby making
the GUI server much more flexible. This line of work is complemented with
an improved way of supporting client-provided pointer shapes, and a new
general component for handling global keys.


Supplementing user-activity information to the hover report
-----------------------------------------------------------

Nitpicker's existing "hover" report features the information of the currently
hovered client (e.g., the client's label and domain). In the new version, the
report also features the information whether or not the user has actively
moved the pointer during the last half second. This is analogous to how the
"focus" report features user-activity information about recent key
press/release activity. When combined, the "hover" and "focus" reports provide
a way to detect the absence of user activity, e.g., to implement a lock screen
or screen saver. If both reports have no 'active' attribute, such a component
can schedule a timer. Whenever either of both reports shows an 'active'
attribute, the timer is reset. The lock screen becomes active once the timeout
triggers.


Key-state reporting
-------------------

For debugging purposes or for implementing global key combinations, Nitpicker
now offers "keystate" reports. The report is updated each time, the user
presses or releases a key. It lists all currently pressed keys along with the
key count as observed by Nitpicker.


Report last clicked-on client
-----------------------------

The new 'clicked' report features the information about the client, on which
the user actively clicked most recently. It is useful to implement a
click-to-focus policy outside of Nitpicker.


Externalizing Nitpicker's focus policy
--------------------------------------

Traditionally, Nitpicker had a builtin policy about the input focus, which
ensured that only the user can change the focus. The input focus is changed
whenever the user clicks on an unfocused view. If permitted by the policy of
the domain, the clicked-on client receives the focus. The policy configuration
allows one to define domains that never receive any focus, domains that
receive the focus only temporarily while the button is kept pressed (the
so-called "transient focus"), or domains that can receive the regular input
focus.

However, there are situations where this builtin policy stands in the way. For
example, in a scenario based on virtual consoles, the user wants to be able to
switch virtual consoles via keyboard shortcuts and expects the input focus to
match the currently visible console regardless of any mouse clicks. Another
example is the change of the input focus via key combinations like alt-tab.

As an alternative to the builtin policy, the new version of Nitpicker is able
to respond to an externally provided "focus" state in the form of a ROM
session. This state is driven by a dedicated component, like the new
_nit_focus_ component that implements the traditional click-to-focus policy.
By supplying the focus as a ROM session to Nitpicker, it becomes easy to
globally overwrite the focus if needed. One particular example is a lock
screen that should capture the focus when becoming active, and yield the focus
to the original owner when becoming inactive.

The new explicit focus handling can be activated by setting the '<config>'
attribute 'focus' to the value "rom". Further down the road, we plan to make
this option the default, with the ultimate goal to remove the original builtin
policy.


Generalized global-key handling
-------------------------------

The new _global_keys_handler_ component replaces the former _xray-trigger_
component. It transforms a stream of Nitpicker input events to state reports.
The states and the ways of how the user input affects these states is
configurable. Examples for such states are the system-global capslock and
numlock states, or the Nitpicker X-ray mode activated by a global
secure-attention key. The configuration looks as follows:

! <config>
!   <bool name="xray" initial="no"/>
!
!   <press   name="KEY_F1" bool="xray" change="on"/>
!   <release name="KEY_F1" bool="xray" change="off"/>
!   <press   name="KEY_F2" bool="xray" change="toggle"/>
!
!   <report name="xray" delay_ms="125">
!     <hovered domain="panel"/>
!     <bool name="xray"/>
!   </report>
! </config>

A '<bool>' node declares a boolean state variable with the given name and its
initial value (default is "no"). There may be any number of such variables.

The '<press>' and '<release>' nodes define how key events affect the state
variables. Each of those nodes refers to a specific state variable via the
'bool' attribute, and the operation as the 'change' attribute. Possible
'change' attribute values are "on", "off", and "toggle".

The '<report>' node defines a state-dependent report with the name as
specified in the 'name' attribute. The report-generation rate can be
artificially limited by the 'delay_ms' attribute. If specified, the report is
not issued immediately on a state change but after the specified amount of
milliseconds. The '<report>' node contains a number of conditions. Whenever
one of those conditions is true, a report of the following form is generated:

! <xray enabled="yes"/>

Otherwise, the report's 'enabled' attribute has the value "no". Possible
conditions are '<bool>' and '<hovered>'. The '<bool>' condition is true if the
named boolean state variable has the value true. The '<hovered>' condition is
true if the currently hovered Nitpicker client belongs to the domain as
specified in the 'domain' attribute. The latter information is obtained from a
ROM module named "hover", which corresponds to Nitpicker's hover reports.

To use the global-keys-handler in practice, one needs to configure the
Nitpicker GUI server such that the press/release events of the global keys of
interest are routed to the global-keys-handler. This can be achieved by
Nitpicker's '<global-key>' configuration nodes. For example:

! <global-key name="KEY_F1" label="global_keys_handler -> input" />
! <global-key name="KEY_F2" label="global_keys_handler -> input" />


More flexible geometry definitions of nit_fb instances
------------------------------------------------------

The _nit_fb_ component translates the Nitpicker session interface into the
low-level input and framebuffer session interfaces such that raw framebuffer
clients can be hosted as Nitpicker applications. The position and size of such
an application is configurable.

The new 'origin' attribute denotes the coordinate origin of the values
specified in the 'xpos' and 'ypos' attributes. Supported origins are
"top_left", "top_right", "bottom_left", and "bottom_right". This attribute
allows one to align a Nitpicker view at any of the four screen corners.

The 'width' and 'height' attribute values can now be negative. If so, they are
relative to the physical screen size. E.g., when using a screen size of
640x480, the effective width for a 'width' attribute value of "-100" would be
640 - 100 = 540.


Simplified handling of client-provided pointer shapes
-----------------------------------------------------

The _pointer_ component that accompanies Nitpicker by default shows a static
pointer shape only. In advanced scenarios, for example when multiple instances
of VirtualBox are present on one screen, it is desired to show the shape
provided by the currently hovered guest OS. This was accomplished by a
special _vbox_pointer_ component with access to both the client-provided
shape and Nitpicker's hover report. Whereas this component sufficed for
relatively static scenarios, the pointer's policy configuration became rather
difficult in dynamic scenarios where the labels of the displayed VMs or
applications are unknown at system-integration time.

The new version simplifies the shape handling by letting the pointer component
play the role of a "Report" service that consumes "shape" reports. This way,
the pointer implicitly knowns the label of the shape-providing client. It
matches the labels of its report clients against the currently hovered client
as obtained from Nitpicker's hover report. If there is a match, the pointer
displays the matching client-provided shape. Since the new component is
generically applicable, e.g., not only for VirtualBox-provided shapes but also
for Qt5-provided shapes (Section [Displaying of Qt5's custom pointer shapes]),
it has become Nitpicker's default pointer component.


USB-driver support for RNDIS
============================

In this release, support for Microsoft's proprietary RNDIS protocol was
enabled in our Linux-based USB network driver. Thereby it is possible to use
the network sharing ("tethering") features provided by many Android devices.
The driver was tested using devices from different vendors.

Since the RNDIS driver is based on the 'cdc_ether' driver (the open protocol
alternative phone vendors should be using), it had to be enabled as well.
Due to lack of any devices supporting CDC, while enabled, the driver could not
be tested and must be considered experimental for now.

The porting and enabling of the driver was done by Alexander Senier from
[https://componolit.com - Componolit]. Thanks for this welcome contribution!


Refined Rump-kernel-based file-system support
=============================================

We extended the 'rump_fs' file-system server with the ability to mount and
unmount the underlying file system on demand. The server will mount the file
system on the first established session request and in return will unmount the
file system when the last session is closed. In case all clients are shut down
before the server is stopped, this prevents leaving the file system marked as
dirty. Even if the file system itself is in a clean state, the dirty bit might
otherwise trigger a false negative result when performing a file-system check.

In release [https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/14.02 - 14.02], we
added a e2fsprogs Noux port. Since the use of the VFS library within libc,
Noux is not strictly needed anymore for running tools like the e2fsprogs
utilities. On the contrary, it increases the complexity of a file-system
management mechanism needlessly. With this release, we introduce a port of the
'e2fsck' tool from e2fsprogs to Genode that does not depend on Noux. It can be
used by a management component to check an ext2 file-system prior to starting
'rump_fs' and in case of errors to attempt to fix them automatically.

Additionally, we significantly stripped down Genode's version of the Rump
kernel. By integrating Rump directly into Genode's build system, compiling and
checking out required Rump sources only, we were able to reduce the compile
time of 'rump_fs' and the source archive size (from about 700 MiB to about 10
MiB).

Runtime environments and programming languages
##############################################

Genode components based on the Nim language
===========================================

Support for the [https://nim-lang.org/ - Nim] programming language was
introduced in the [https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/17.05 - 17.05]
release and during this release period, our understanding of Nim, its idiom,
and its interaction with the Genode framework progressed to a point where
native components can be reasonably implemented using the language.

The 'hotkey_edit' component in the world repository toggles XML sections in
and out of a file managed by 'xml_editor' when triggered by key input events.
The component is written in Nim, acts as a  "Nitpicker", "Input", "Report",
and "ROM" client, and follows the Genode paradigm of a state-machine driven by
asynchronous signalling. The application specific source is also less than one
hundred lines of code.

To enable client usage of Genode services the respective 'Client' or
'Connection' C++ classes are wrapped as Nim objects by taking advantage of the
Genode 'Constructible' class to be able to manually invoke constructors during
object initialization. Wrapping service classes and their methods is currently
done by hand, but changes to service interfaces are so gradual that it is more
effective than automated code generation. Signal handling is achieved using
anonymous procedures and happens when the thread of execution winds back to
the initial entrypoint. This approach is just the same as for components that
are linked to the 'libc' library, and contrasted with components linked to the
'posix' library. The Nim language has no conventions for a special "main"
procedure like C or Go, so signals handlers are dispatched by default after
all top-level statements have been executed.

The language has experimentally proven to be flexible enough to implement RPC
servers, but more experience is required to determine if a garbage-collected
language can manage to abide by transient RAM resource quotas, as any
multi-session server must do to reliably serve an indefinite number of
clients. The standard language runtime also depends on the 'libc' library,
which is relatively expensive and complicated for typical native components.
This dependency also prevents the implementation of VFS plugins in Nim, which
must be available as the C runtime is initialized. Removing the dependency is
certainly possible, but it remains an open question of whether it is practical
to maintain such radical changes.

To experiment with the Nim language, a recent release or development version
of the compiler is required. To this end, the Genode toolchain uses a custom
compiler by default. A script is provided to build the recommended version at
_tool/tool_chain_nim_.


GDB-based debugging of server components
========================================

We adapted the 'gdb_monitor' component to the asynchronous session-creation
procedure introduced in Genode release
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/16.11#New_session-creation_procedure - 16.11].
The current release makes it possible to debug components that implement
Genode services.


Applications and libraries
##########################

Displaying of Qt5's custom pointer shapes
=========================================

Qt applications often make use of custom mouse-pointer shapes, for example
when a text input field is hovered. We enabled this feature for our Qt5 port
by letting Qt report its custom pointer shapes to the newly enhanced pointer
component described in Section
[Simplified handling of client-provided pointer shapes]. The use of the new
feature is illustrated in the _qt5_calculatorform.run_ script. Note the
rewriting of the 'shape' session label.


Qt5-based virtual keyboard
==========================

Genode supports user input with keyboard and mouse attached via PS/2 and USB
as well as USB touch panels. The current release brings an option for Qt5
applications to support textual-information input in situations where a
hardware keyboard is missing. The Qt5 input stack was extended for platform
input contexts and the accompanied example _run/qt5_virtualkeyboard.run_
showcases the feature.

[image virtual_keyboard]

Thanks to Johannes Kliemann for his contribution!


Resizable libSDL-based applications like avplay
===============================================

There are quite a few ports of SDL-based software available on Genode that
work well when executed in isolation, e.g., a game running in full screen
directly in the frame buffer. However, when running in a common desktop
scenario, the fixed size of the frame buffer used in Genode's SDL video back
end is a noticeable limitation. So, in addition to removing the usage of
deprecated APIs in the SDL back ends, we lifted this limitation as well.

Removing the usage of the deprecated APIs, which rely on a global environment,
led to the addition of the Genode-specific initialization function
'sdl_init_genode' that has to be called prior to 'SDL_Init'. For that purpose,
we introduce a stub library 'sdlmain'. In accordance to the posix library, it
handles command-line argument parsing, proper SDL initializing, and the call
to SDL's 'main' function. For interacting with the Genode API, we might have
to execute signal handlers, e.g., whenever a framebuffer mode change signal is
received. This is complicated from within a thread that is running libc code,
which is true for most if not all SDL-based components. Therefor and because
those components come with their own event loop, that polls SDL for events, we
start the 'main' function in its own thread. The main entrypoint of the
component does all the signal handling and the dispatcher flag signals in a
way that SDL can transform them into SDL_Events and inject them into the event
loop.

This changes enable the seamless resizing of a running avplay instance.


Front end for the Libretro API
==============================

A component that has been in the world repository for almost a year has been
refactored and is ready for mention. The 'retro_frontend' is a native front
end to games implemented as "Libretro cores".
[https://libretro.com - Libretro] is an API that exposes generic
audio/video/input callbacks from a dynamic library to a front end. The front
end handles video output, audio output, input, and the application's life
cycle. This novel arrangement is intended to minimize the effort of porting
games to different platforms and to increase future backwards compatibility.
On Genode, these cores are executed frame-by-frame as compelled by the front
end rather than by a main loop within the game. Game assets are loaded as
configured in a general manner at the front end and multiple input devices can
be managed and mapped into cores. This in effect moves the platform
abstraction layer tighter around the game engine and relinquished more control
and configuration to a native layer provided by the user. Documentation on
using the front end can be found in the world repository along with examples
for emulating a few game consoles.


Platforms
#########

UEFI boot, consistent use of GRUB2 on x86
=========================================

With the previous release, we already added support for GRUB2 when booting in
UEFI mode. However, for non-UEFI boots, we still relied on GRUB-0.97 and
ISOLINUX from the Syslinux Project as boot loaders.

With the experiences gained from GRUB2, we decided to modernize our bootloader
chain for x86. With this release, we solely use GRUB2 during all x86 boots.

For ISO creation, we now leverage the images - shipped by GRUB2 -
'embedded.img' and 'eltorito.img', together with the 'xorriso' tool. Due to
this change, we were able to remove the ISOLINUX binaries and eltorito files
of ancient GRUB1.

The final GRUB2 binaries are now integrated as external Genode port, which
can be installed by invoking:

! tool/ports/prepare_port grub2

The 'grub2' port contains the GRUB2 binaries. Additionally, the port contains
the instructions and the references to the git source code of GRUB2 used to
generate the bootloader binaries. With the information provided within the
port, one can easily reproduce the GRUB2 builds if desired.


Enabling MMU-based threat mitigations by default
================================================

With this release, we enabled support to leverage non-executable memory on
Genode. On hardware and kernels supporting this feature, it is now enabled by
default.

On ARM this feature is available to all supported kernels, namely our own
hw kernel, seL4, and Fiasco.OC.

On x86 the 64bit kernels hw, NOVA, and Fiasco.OC support this feature.

SeL4 currently misses support on x86. The remaining x86 32bit kernels (i.e.,
OKL4, Pistachio and Fiasco) don't offer non-executable memory support, since
they do not configure the page-tables in the PAE (physical address extension)
format, which is required by non-executable memory.


Updated seL4 to kernel branch 7.0
=================================

In the previous releases, we extended our seL4 support and thereby collected a
patch series for the seL4 kernel, e.g. UEFI boot support. We submitted the
patches to the seL4 developers who integrated most of our changes into the
seL4 7.0 kernel release.

Additionally to the update, we extended the UEFI framebuffer support for the
seL4 kernel so that our simple boot framebuffer driver may now utilize the
graphics device if setup by GRUB2 during UEFI boot. The patches to the kernel
got submitted to the seL4 maintainers for review and for inclusion.


Execution on bare hardware (base-hw)
====================================

During the previous releases, several preparation steps were made to enable
the execution of Genode's core as privileged code inside the protection domain
of each component. With this release, we pushed the genesis of the base-hw
core component and its kernel library to finally achieve that goal. Now, the
virtual address space of each component is split into a privileged and an
unprivileged part. The privileged part is shared between all components and
does not vary when switching between different protection domains.
Nonetheless, it is accessible by the privileged threads of core and the kernel
library's context only. The advantages of this approach are less context
switch overhead and less complex assembler code with respect to the
platform-specific exception and system call entry path.


Improved offline validation of Genode configurations
====================================================

Genode's configuration is based on XML and gets validated by xmllint during
each run tool invocation. Up to now, we used xmllint to check for a valid XML
syntax.

With this release, we added an additional semantic check for Genode's 'init'
component. The check determines whether the XML nodes and attributes are known
and understood by 'init'. This check is performed on each run tool invocation
at integration time. The XML schema file is located in

! tool/run/genode.xsd

and gets applied by xmllint.