57aff40228
docs/ was ten files where a plan, a description, a guide and a bug report all
sat next to each other. It is now architecture/ (what SchOS is), plan/ (what it
will be), guides/ (how to work on it) and history/ (why it is like this), with
an index that states the one rule holding it together: when something is
finished it moves from plan/ to architecture/ and is rewritten as a description
of the thing rather than a record of building it.
A ticked checkbox says the work happened. It does not say what the work
*produced*, and six months later the checkbox is all that is left. The network
stack proved the point: finished, verified end to end, and for a month the only
description of it anywhere was a checkbox four levels of indentation deep.
So roadmap.md went from 534 lines to 181 -- nothing deleted, the done work
graduated. Seven subsystems that were finished and undescribed now have
descriptions: boot, kernel, syscalls, filesystem, networking, graphics, usb,
init. Every one ends with "What it does not do", which is the section that pays;
a document listing only strengths is marketing, and the reader who needs it most
is the one about to trip over a limitation nobody wrote down.
schfs.md still opened with "phases 1 through 3 1/2 are done, phase 4 is next"
long after all five had landed. It is a description now, with the phase record
and the hard-won bugs moved to history/.
Three corrections found on the way, all load-bearing:
* projects/schcom/README.md claimed SCM_RIGHTS was done. There is no
sendmsg/recvmsg in the kernel at all, and an entire GUI plan rested on it.
* The root README said "No TCP/IP" months after the stack landed.
* history/kernel.md sec.7 was marked "in progress" on a problem that process
groups solved.
Also adds plan/1.0.md, which draws a finish line so the open list stops being
infinite, and marks schwm/ and schde/ superseded: in Wayland the compositor is
the window manager, so that split dissolves rather than being abandoned.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VQ7Qx8E1q1M1bbCq8QLHS2
98 lines
4.6 KiB
Markdown
98 lines
4.6 KiB
Markdown
# Schcom — the SchOS Compositor
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Owns the display. Every pixel that reaches the screen goes through it.
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Clients do not draw to the framebuffer; they draw into their own buffers and
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hand them over. Schcom decides what is on top of what, composites the result,
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and presents it. It also owns input: it reads the raw event devices and sends
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each event to whichever client should have it.
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That is the whole job. Window *placement* is not part of it — that is SchWM's,
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and Schcom exposes a protocol for it rather than implementing policy itself.
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## Status
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**v0 runs.** A client connects, is given a shared buffer, draws into it and
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commits; the result is composited and presented. Verified end to end by
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`make schcom-test`, which boots SchOS, runs the compositor and a client, then
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screendumps the framebuffer and asserts the pixels **from the host** — the
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compositor's own report that it composited something proves nothing. It runs
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two overlapping clients and checks that the newer one wins in the overlap: a
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compositor that cannot order two surfaces cannot host a window manager.
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What exists:
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- framebuffer output through `/dev/fb0` and the fbdev ioctls, double-buffered
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- a versioned protocol over a Unix socket, with a handshake that must come first
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- shared-memory buffers, one per surface, owned by the compositor
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- surface / attach / **commit** semantics: nothing is shown mid-draw
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- input from `/dev/input/eventN`, routed to the topmost surface
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- clients that die are cleaned up, including their shm segments
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- **multiple clients**, composited bottom-to-top in creation order
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What does not exist yet: damage tracking beyond "repaint everything", multiple
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outputs, subsurfaces, and any focus model beyond "topmost". Those are additions
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rather than rewrites, which is the reason for committing to the surface/commit
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model now instead of growing into it later.
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## Building
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Not part of the OS build. Needs `make ports` first, for the sysroot's libc:
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```sh
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make projects # builds and stages into sysroot/bin
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make # rebuilds the image so the binaries are on it
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make schcom-test # boots it and checks the pixels
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```
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## What it needs from the kernel
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| Need | State |
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|---|---|
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| Shared memory (`shmget`/`shmat`/`shmdt`) | done |
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| `mmap` of `/dev/fb0` | done |
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| Framebuffer geometry via the fbdev ioctls | done |
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| Unix domain sockets | done |
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| Raw input events — key down/up with modifiers | done |
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| `SCM_RIGHTS` | **not implemented** — there is no `sendmsg`/`recvmsg` at all |
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| Mode setting and double buffering | partial — virtio-gpu binds, no modeset API yet |
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## Design notes
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- **Buffers are shared memory, not pipes.** A pipe means copying every frame; at
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800×600×32 that is 1.9 MB per frame per client.
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- **The compositor owns the segment, not the client.** It has to survive a
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client crashing mid-frame, and it must not be something a client can resize
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underneath the compositor.
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- **One protocol, versioned from the start.** SchWM and SchDE are separate
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programs, so this is a real compatibility surface on day one. Every message
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carries its own length, so an unknown message is skipped rather than
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desynchronising the stream — that is what lets a v0 compositor survive a v1
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client.
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- **Policy belongs to SchWM.** If Schcom starts deciding where windows go, the
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split has already failed. `CREATE_SURFACE` carries x/y today only because
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there is no SchWM yet to ask.
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## On Wayland
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> **Decided: Schcom moves onto Wayland**, replacing the protocol below while
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> keeping the architecture. See [`docs/plan/wayland.md`](../../docs/plan/wayland.md).
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The protocol is deliberately Wayland-shaped — surfaces rather than windows,
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buffers attached and made visible only on commit, and the compositor telling
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clients when to draw. Wayland is **MIT-licensed**, so it can be linked against
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without any conflict with Apache-2.0 (see `docs/licensing.md`), and
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supporting it later is intended.
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The one place v0 knowingly diverges: a buffer handle is a System V shared memory
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id passed as an integer, where Wayland passes a file descriptor over
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`SCM_RIGHTS`. `struct schcom_surface` carries a `handle_kind` field precisely so
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that switching would be a new value rather than a protocol break.
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**That field cannot save us, and this README used to claim `SCM_RIGHTS` was
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done.** It is not — there is no `sendmsg`/`recvmsg` in the kernel at all. And
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Wayland's `wl_shm_create_pool` passes a descriptor with no alternative form, so
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*our* protocol being flexible is not the flexibility that is needed. Adding
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descriptor passing is item 1 of
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[`docs/plan/foundations.md`](../../docs/plan/foundations.md).
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