# Roadmap — everything else still open The three current decisions have their own documents; see [README.md](README.md). This file holds what is left: work that is scoped, agreed and unstarted, with nothing in it that is finished. **Finished work is not here.** It moved to [../architecture/](../architecture/) and was rewritten as a description of what it produced — see [the rule](../README.md#the-rule-that-keeps-this-from-rotting). What used to be phases 1 through 4 of this file, several hundred lines of ticked boxes, is now `usb`, `networking.md`, `graphics.md` and `devices.md` over there. --- ## 1. Storage and the boot path **Make a USB disk mountable and bootable.** The xHCI stack, the bulk-only transport, the SCSI layer and the block device all work — a superblock reads back through `bread()`. What is missing is that **the root device is compiled in rather than selectable**, so nothing can be told to mount it. This is also the first piece of the installer, and it is the single change that would most enlarge what SchOS can boot from. ## 2. Graphics - **A `/dev/dri`-style device with mode setting**, so resolution stops being whatever the loader asked for. This was to be done *with* [hybrid.md](hybrid.md)'s GPU eviction, and that eviction has now happened — `cmd/vgpud` drives virtio-gpu from userspace. The modeset API is the next thing it makes affordable, and is milestone H3 over there rather than here. - **Double buffering and vblank.** `display_ops` specifies both and no driver implements either. Schcom needs both to not tear. - **Port the console onto the text layer and delete the cell grid.** The layer exists, the rasteriser exists, and the console still indexes `font_data[256][16]`. - **Load a font from disk** and point the console at it. - **CFF/Type 2 charstrings**, so OTF fonts work. A separate `font_ops` provider and a bytecode interpreter, *not* an extension of the `glyf` path. - **Text layout** — advance widths, kerning — as a library in `lib/`, so the terminal and the file manager are not each solving it. The console keeps its fixed grid until the first item above; proportional text belongs to the GUI. ## 3. Networking Two things the stack owed on the day it landed, both still owed: - **`accept()` does not report the peer's address**, and there is no `getsockname`/`getpeername`. Nothing has needed them yet; a server that wants to log who connected will. - **No routing table.** With two interfaces up, the first is the default route and the second is reachable only by an address on its own subnet. That is a rule rather than an accident, and it is not routing. Two that were on this list are now done and described in [../architecture/networking.md](../architecture/networking.md): `setsockopt` honours six options and refuses the rest, and `sendmsg`/`recvmsg` carry `SCM_RIGHTS`. A third is closer than it was — toybox's `ping` needed `recvmsg` *and* `IP_RECVTTL`, and only the second is still missing. ## 4. The interactive crash screen PSOGM renders and stops. The idea is *a small OS inside the crash*, and the framing decides the design: > At panic time the kernel is the only thing running, which is exactly why it can > offer what a live system cannot: walk the stack, read another process's memory, > dump page tables, inspect the process table — with no scheduler and no locking > to respect, because nothing else can race you. What makes it a *system* rather than a print statement is that it keeps the base machine's drivers. Concretely, the ones that work with interrupts off: the framebuffer (`gfx_draw_pixel` is a plain memory write), the PS/2 keyboard (pollable via ports 0x60/0x64), and the serial port. **Those three are a complete console.** Everything else — IDE, USB, the timer, anything that sleeps or takes a sleeplock — is off limits, because the lock it needs may be precisely the one held by the CPU that just died. So the shape is a **polled event loop over preallocated state**: no `kalloc`, no `sleep`/`wakeup`, no `acquire` on anything a live path might hold, one static command buffer, and that driver set. **That restriction is not a limitation to work around later; it is the invariant that makes the mode trustworthy when everything else is not.** Anything wanting more should be answered by rebooting into a recovery environment. A useful precedent to read but not copy: DDB, the BSD in-kernel debugger, is exactly this, and its hard-won rule is the same one — *a debugger that can deadlock is worse than no debugger.* ## 5. The installer and `.sip` Scoped in [`projects/schinst/README.md`](../../projects/schinst/README.md), which holds the detail. In short: - [ ] `.sip` format specification, **written down before any code** - [ ] `tools/mksip` — capture a directory tree into a package - [ ] The apply path - [ ] An installation environment that boots from the ISO, partitions, applies the `.sip`, and installs the loader `.sip` is modelled on WIM, and the thing worth copying from WIM is that it is **file-based, not block-based**: one file holds a whole filesystem, applies to a partition of any size, and several images can share their common files. **Most of this already exists.** `tools/mkschfs.c` and `tools/mkfs.c` both do content dedup with an `(st_dev, st_ino)` fast path, and SchFS's B-tree is content addressed. `mksip` should share that code rather than reimplement it — that is the reason the dedup was factored the way it was. Open questions, all wanting a decision before code: - **Compression.** Something with a small decompressor is worth more than something with a good ratio, because the decompressor runs in the installation environment. - **Multiple images per `.sip`** — WIM's real trick, install/recovery/boot sharing one blob store. Worth the complexity now, or not? - **Can the kernel mount a `.sip` read-only directly?** It is close to a filesystem already, and if it can, the installation environment's root can simply *be* the `.sip`. The GUI for this is a Wayland client; see [wayland.md](wayland.md). ## 6. SchFS beyond SchOS In the order they should happen. **~~An on-disk format version~~, and an upgrade path.** The version policy is done — see [../architecture/schfs.md](../architecture/schfs.md). What remains is the **upgrade step**, and it cannot be written until there are two formats to convert between; the first bump is when that becomes real work rather than speculation. The format is now pinned, which is what the other two items were waiting on. **A Linux implementation, FUSE first.** Three reasons in order of weight: it can be tested with `fsx` and `xfstests`, which are far harsher than anything written alongside the code; it carries no licence entanglement, since libfuse is LGPL and used across a process boundary; and it can reuse the read/write logic already in `tools/mkschfs` and `tools/schfs_fsck` rather than being written twice and having the two disagree. A kernel module is a different project, comes only after FUSE passes `xfstests`, and carries the licence problem [../licensing.md](../licensing.md) describes. **The missing features**, listed honestly before adding any: no journal replay across an unclean shutdown beyond what copy-on-write gives for free, no snapshots, no sparse-file support, and no online `fsck`. **Snapshots are the one where the existing design already pays for most of the cost** — the B-tree is copy-on-write, which is most of the machinery; nothing takes or names a snapshot. ## 7. The kernel's own gaps Not phases, and each one improves everything above it: - **A slab or pool allocator.** `kalloc` hands out one page at a time, and every subsystem written since has invented its own fixed-size table to work around that. This is the single change that would most improve the rest of the kernel. - **A page cache**, which is what a general writable `MAP_SHARED` needs. [foundations.md](foundations.md) delivers a `memfd` instead, which is narrower and sufficient for the GUI. - **Symlinks in procfs**, so `/proc//exe` can be one and `ps -o comm` stops printing `[init]`. Belongs with the rest of the VFS work rather than on its own. - **The `ls -lR` hang** — **not reproducible**, and kept here because the absence of a result is a result. Instrumented and hunted at length; see Gate 0 of [1.0.md](1.0.md). Two real defects were found on the way and fixed, neither proven to be the cause. - **No garbage collector for descriptors in flight.** An `AF_UNIX` socket passed over itself and never received leaks the pair. Bounded at thirty-two sockets, and nothing in the tree does it — but a third-party program could. --- ## Kept out of scope on purpose - Anything that needs pushing or publishing. This work stays local. - TrueType hinting. - XWayland.