Release Notes for HelenOS mainline

Note: This document is a draft describing a future HelenOS release and is subject to change. The software described here has not been released yet. To get these latest and greatest features now, check out our Bazaar mainline. (But you will also get the latest bugs).

HelenOS version (codename) was released on date.

This document contains a summary of changes made to HelenOS since release 0.4.3.

Special Notes for this Release

Features Introduced in This Release

General

Kernel

• Introduced memory reservations in the kernel
  • Prevents from committing to allocate more memory than is really available.

Services and Drivers

• Location service
  • Replacement for device mapper, services instead of devices
  • Services registered by name, can be added to categories
  • Service categories replace devman device classes
  • /dev/devices is now in /loc/devices, instead of ls /dev/class use locinfo

• Device driver framework (DDF) improvements
  • Added devctl utility to print and manage device tree
  • Anticipated device removal (using devctl) support (only works with some drivers)

• USB support
  • UHCI and OHCI host controllers
  • USB HID Keyboard and Mouse
  • USB Mass Storage (standard USB flash drives)
  • lsusb and usbinfo utilities
  • Unplug limited due to missing DDF functionality

File Systems

• Added read-only support for Ext2 file system.
• Added initial read / write support for exFAT file system.
• The FAT file system server now supports also FAT12 and FAT32 variants.
• The FAT server now supports the LFN extension.

Networking

Applications

• Shell syntax for input/output redirection
• Shell command/file name completion (using Tab key)
• Besides FAT16, mkfat can create FAT12 and FAT32 too.

Libraries

• libc and some other libraries can be optionally made dynamically loaded on ia32.

Miscellaneous

Features Removed in This Release

• Support for running HelenOS on the Sun Enterprise 6500 and Serengeti machines has been removed as the support for these platforms depended on the availability of the commercial Simics simulator.

Regressions in This Release

• For the list of regressions since the previous release, see this report.
• Notable regressions

Fixed Logged Bugs & Enhancements

• For the list of all logged defects fixed in this release, see this report.
• For the list of all logged enhancements integrated in this release, see this report.

Known Bugs

• For the list of known bugs still not fixed in this release, see this report.
• For the list of all open tickets, see this report.