SchOS/docs/history
Repository files (latest commit first)
Filename Latest commit message Latest commit date
Nexoniarz a1c965da1e include: one folder per subsystem, and includes that name it
Sixty-five headers sat side by side in include/, so `#include "irq.h"`
said nothing about where irq.h was or what it belonged to, and errno.h,
stat.h and fcntl.h at the top shadowed the system's for any host tool
built with -I./include. They are in folders now -- arch/ core/ fs/
dev/ gfx/ net/ uapi/ (and ldls/ for the Linux driver layer) -- and
every include names the folder, as Linux's do: "core/proc.h".

Done mechanically and checked the hard way: the kernel built from this
tree disassembles identically to the one built from the tree before
it. The full image boots, and userland is the same set of programs.
Paths in docs and comments follow; docs/guides/layout.md has a table
of what is where, and tools/fix-includes.py rewrites old-style
includes from the folders in the tree, for code written before this.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S1giNvrHTrPMPw7V6x1kQ4
2026-10-23 15:05:12 +02:00
..
kernel.md include: one folder per subsystem, and includes that name it 2026-10-23 15:05:12 +02:00
moving-to-linux.md licence: SchOS is GPL-2.0-or-later, no longer Apache-2.0 2026-10-22 08:48:45 +02:00
README.md docs: four directories, and a rule for when a thing leaves the roadmap 2026-09-12 17:13:35 +02:00
schfs.md include: one folder per subsystem, and includes that name it 2026-10-23 15:05:12 +02:00

History

Why SchOS is the way it is. Bugs whose cause was nowhere near their symptom, and the few write-ups that have nowhere better to live.

kernel.md The expensive ones. Boot, SMP, signals, ABI assumptions, /proc, input.
schfs.md How the filesystem was built, and what each phase cost.
moving-to-linux.md The Windows-to-Fedora move.

What belongs in here

A bug whose cause is not visible from the code that fixed it.

That is the whole test. If reading the fix explains the problem, the fix is the documentation and nothing needs writing down. If the fix looks arbitrary — a constant moved by eight, a field reordered, a check inverted — then the strangeness is load-bearing and the next person to touch it deserves to know why before they change it back.

Every entry here is a thing that looked like a different problem than it was.

What does not belong

  • A changelog. git log is the changelog.
  • A bug that was found and fixed in an hour. Cost is the filter.
  • How something works. That is ../architecture/, written in the present tense for somebody who does not care what it used to be.
  • Anything still open. An unfinished investigation goes in ../plan/ or in the code as a comment. This directory is past tense.

How to write one

Symptom first, then diagnosis, then the fix, then the transferable part.

The transferable part is the reason the entry exists. __thread being wrong for per-CPU data is worth more than the specific null dereference it caused; "a layout constant that several artifacts must agree on wants a check that stops the build, not a comment asking people to remember" is worth more than the bootloader offset that taught it.

Say how it was found, when the technique was the hard part. A hardware watchpoint through QEMU's gdb stub named an instruction on the first run after three rounds of cprintf had narrowed it to nothing — that is reusable, and the bug is not.

Do not clean up the embarrassing part. The near-miss where a change passed every assertion green without having been applied at all is one of the most useful entries in this directory, and it only works because it admits that a grep returning three hits was read as confirmation without counting what they were.