# projects/

Things that run **on** SchOS rather than things that **are** SchOS.

Everything above this directory — `kernel/`, `boot/`, `lib/`, `cmd/`,
`include/` — is the operating system: it boots, it owns the hardware, and it
is one program that either works or does not. Everything in here is an
ordinary program that talks to it through syscalls, exactly as `toybox` does.

The split exists because the alternative gets bad quickly. A compositor,
a window manager and a desktop are each larger than the kernel will be for a
long time. Grown inside the OS tree they would blur into it: a compositor
would start reaching into kernel headers because they are right there, the
build would grow a dependency from the kernel to a GUI, and "does SchOS
boot" would stop having a clear answer. Keeping them separate forces the
boundary to be a real interface — syscalls and protocols — rather than a
shared header nobody meant to share.

Concretely, code in here:

- links against the sysroot's libc, never against kernel headers
- talks to the kernel only through syscalls and `/dev`
- can be built, run and debugged without rebuilding the kernel
- may be split into its own repository later without untangling anything

## What lives here

| Directory  | What it is                                                      |
|------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| `schcom/`  | SchOS Compositor. Owns the display, composites clients, routes input. |
| `schwm/`   | SchOS Window Manager. Window placement, decoration, focus, on top of Schcom. |
| `schde/`   | SchOS Desktop Environment. Panel, launcher, settings, file manager. |
| `schinst/` | The installer, the installation environment, and `.sip` tooling. |
| `schfs-linux/` | SchFS as a filesystem for Linux. FUSE first, a kernel module later. |

**`schfs-linux/` is written to stand on its own.** It does not mention SchOS
anywhere, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight: it is intended to be
the first piece released, and it has to make sense to somebody who has never
heard of the OS it came from — a filesystem is judged as a filesystem. The
connection can be made later, once there is a finished system to connect it to.

Practically, that means anything added there needs its own licence header, its
own README framing, and no cross-references into this tree. It shares the
*format* with `kernel/fs/schfs/`, not the prose.

They stack: SchDE needs SchWM needs Schcom needs the kernel. Nothing points
the other way, and nothing here is a dependency of the kernel build.

## Status

All four are scoped and none is started. What each is waiting on is written
in its own README, and the ordering is in `docs/plan/roadmap.md`.

The short version: Schcom cannot start until the kernel has **unix domain
sockets** (for the client protocol and for passing buffer handles) and **raw
input events** (a `/dev/input` that bypasses the tty line discipline).
Shared memory and framebuffer mmap are already done.