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Nexoniarz d97dd9ed90 net: the DHCP lease goes to the log, not over the user's shell "net: eth0 10.0.2.15/255.255.255.0 via 10.0.2.2" arrived on the display seconds after the prompt did, so the first thing anyone saw after booting was the kernel typing into their session. It lands wherever the cursor happens to be -- in the middle of a command, a fastfetch, or later a compositor's output. console_takeover() hands the framebuffer to userspace on the first exec, and after that the screen belongs to whoever is using the machine. cons_serial_only already encodes that rule for the boot path -- "the display is the product; the serial line is the diagnostics" -- and it starts set for exactly this reason. What was missing is the rule for messages that cannot be timed to happen before userspace starts, because they are waiting on a network. klog() is that: the serial port only, whatever cons_serial_only currently says. A macro rather than a function, because cprintf's varargs cannot be forwarded -- there is no vcprintf, and adding one to duplicate the formatter would cost more than it buys. cprintf holds cons.lock for the whole message, so the flag cannot be observed half-changed by another CPU printing at the same time. Nothing is lost. The line still goes out the UART, which is where bootcheck reads it from and where you want it when something is wrong, and a person who wants to know their address reads /proc/netif. Verified by screendumping the framebuffer after a boot and two fastfetch runs: no interruption on screen, still one occurrence on serial. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VQ7Qx8E1q1M1bbCq8QLHS2		2026-09-12 19:59:05 +02:00
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architecture	net: the DHCP lease goes to the log, not over the user's shell	2026-09-12 19:59:05 +02:00
branding	net: the DHCP lease goes to the log, not over the user's shell	2026-09-12 19:59:05 +02:00
guides	build: a nix shell, because the loader is the one thing gcc cannot build	2026-09-12 18:31:34 +02:00
history	boot: the loader jumped into the framebuffer, because rbx was not clobbered	2026-09-12 18:44:24 +02:00
plan	schfs: records at arbitrary offsets are packed, and the compiler is told	2026-09-12 17:56:36 +02:00
licensing.md	docs: four directories, and a rule for when a thing leaves the roadmap	2026-09-12 17:13:35 +02:00
README.md	docs: a branding folder, and the three marks are not interchangeable	2026-09-12 18:19:09 +02:00

README.md

SchOS documentation

Four kinds of document, kept in four directories, because they answer four different questions and go stale at four different rates.


architecture/	What SchOS is	Present tense. Describes what is built and working.
plan/	What SchOS will be	Future tense. Everything here is unbuilt.
guides/	How to work on it	Imperative. Build it, test it, add to it.
history/	Why it is the way it is	Past tense. Bugs whose cause is not visible from the fix.

Plus two that belong to no category and apply to everything: licensing.md — read it before copying anyone else's code in — and branding/, which holds the marks and the rules for using them.

The rule that keeps this from rotting

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 completed item is not a ticked checkbox. A ticked checkbox says the work happened; it does not say what the work produced, and six months later the checkbox is the only thing left and it explains nothing.

So finishing a piece of work has three steps, and the third is not optional:

The code works and is tested.
The plan entry is deleted.
A description exists in architecture/ written for somebody who was not there — what it does, what shape it has, what it costs, and what it still does not do.

This is not bookkeeping. The tree has already proved it necessary: the network stack was finished, verified end to end, and for a month afterwards the only description of it anywhere was a checkbox in a roadmap, four levels of indentation deep, written in the past tense of somebody arguing for the work rather than explaining the result.

The "what it does not do" section is the one that pays. Every description in architecture/ ends with one. A document that only lists a subsystem's strengths is marketing, and the reader who most needs the document is the one about to trip over a limitation nobody wrote down.

Start here

New to the tree → architecture/README.md, the system layer by layer, then guides/layout.md for where the files are.

Trying to build it → guides/building.md.

Wondering what happens next → plan/1.0.md, which is the finish line, then plan/README.md for the order.

Something is broken and it feels familiar → history/. There is a good chance it is in there.

architecture/ — what SchOS is


README	The system, layer by layer. Read first.
boot.md	Firmware to the first userspace process.
kernel.md	SchIFT: memory, processes, scheduling, traps, signals, SMP.
syscalls.md	The call table, and the Linux personality that lets real software run.
filesystem.md	The VFS, the buffer cache, procfs, mounts.
schfs.md	SchFS: the copy-on-write root filesystem.
devices.md	The device model, driver binding, the class vtables.
usb.md	xHCI, the USB core, and the class drivers.
graphics.md	Framebuffer, text rendering, console, and the crash screen.
networking.md	Drivers, lwIP, sockets — Unix and INET.
init.md	`schinit`, PID 1, and the job manifests.

plan/ — what SchOS will be


README	The three current decisions and the order they happen in.
1.0.md	The finish line. What 1.0 contains, and what is explicitly deferred past it.
foundations.md	The kernel work everything else is blocked on.
init.md	PID 1 becomes a role rather than a process.
wayland.md	The GUI stack, and what gets deleted to make room.
hybrid.md	Moving drivers out of the kernel.
schapi.md	The long-term API layering, and the compatibility promise.
roadmap.md	Everything else still open.

guides/ — how to work on it


building.md	Prerequisites and the build, per host.
testing.md	The harnesses, and what each one actually proves.
layout.md	Repository map, and how to add a program or a port.
adding-a-driver.md	Writing one, binding it, publishing its class vtable.

branding/ — the marks


README	Shift the logo, Guru the icon, SchCotie the mascot: what each is for, the colour rule, and why a raster is committed next to its SVG.

history/ — why it is the way it is


README	What belongs in here and what does not.
kernel.md	Bugs whose cause was nowhere near their symptom.
moving-to-linux.md	The Windows-to-Fedora move, kept for the parts that recur.

Writing one of these

Four conventions, all of them observable in the existing files:

State the cost. Every design choice gave something up. A document that does not say what is a document that will be argued with later by somebody who only sees the downside.

Prefer the measured number to the remembered one. "500 of 3565 files carry the advertising clause" is worth more than "some do", and it was worth the minute it took to count.

Write down the bug that shaped it. Half the non-obvious code in this tree is non-obvious because something failed once. If a design is strange, the strangeness is load-bearing and the reader deserves to know why before changing it.

No dates in headings. A date in a heading turns a description into a changelog, and the description is the thing with a long life. Dates belong in history/, where they mean something.