SchOS/docs/history
Repository files (latest commit first)
Filename Latest commit message Latest commit date
Nexoniarz cb3d28e3d6 docs: README, plan, guides and the site describe what is built now
README: rewritten around what runs (Linux software, Xorg, apk, Linux's drivers), the honest gaps, measured numbers.
plan/: 1.0.md is the finish line, where each clause of the acceptance test stands, and the register (one failing
clause: a root that survives a reboot); built plans (foundations, hybrid, alpine, xorg) and the decided-against one
(wayland) are gone, their content lives in architecture/; roadmap.md is only what is still open.
guides: building/layout/testing/adding-a-driver (Linux code may be used). history: four entries (ls -lR, TLB
shootdowns, MDIO 0x02460246, netlink MSG_TRUNC). Website: cards, stack, download page, docs index.
Code comments that pointed at deleted plan docs point at the architecture docs.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EVRhxi9zpdW2uDUN4FVcao
2026-10-26 08:08:05 +01:00
..
kernel.md docs: README, plan, guides and the site describe what is built now 2026-10-26 08:08:05 +01:00
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: README, plan, guides and the site describe what is built now 2026-10-26 08:08:05 +01:00
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, TLBs, a stub that returned a flag word.
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.