SchOS/docs/plan
Repository files (latest commit first)
Filename Latest commit message Latest commit date
Nexoniarz 7c8cf51941 schfs: records at arbitrary offsets are packed, and the compiler is told
A leaf's value area holds variable-length records end to end, so a record begins
wherever the one before it finished -- a multiple of 8 only by luck. The code
reads them by casting a pointer into the block, which tells the compiler they
are aligned when they are not.

That works on x86, which is why it has never shown as a bug, and it is undefined
in C. A compiler entitled to assume 8-byte alignment may emit an instruction
that requires it, and the failure would arrive at a different optimisation level
or on a different architecture looking like filesystem corruption rather than
like codegen. UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer reported 31 of them across obj.c,
objw.c, attr.c and space.c.

Seven types now carry SCHFS_PACKED: dirent_rec, extent, extref, index_rec,
attr_rec, snap and inode. Two of those -- attr_rec and inode -- were never
reported, because schfs_objtest does not reach an unaligned instance of either.
They were latent rather than absent, and casting into a leaf is the same lie
whether or not a test has caught it yet.

NO ON-DISK LAYOUT CHANGED, and that was measured before the annotation was
applied rather than assumed: every one of these already carries explicit `pad`
fields and therefore has no implicit padding, so sizes and member offsets are
identical with and without it. Seven _Static_asserts now pin the sizes, because
a record that silently grows misreads every existing volume from that point on
and looks like corruption rather than like a struct that changed.

schfs_node_hdr, schfs_item, schfs_kptr and schfs_uberblock are deliberately left
alone. The node header is exactly 32 bytes, so the items and key pointers after
it are already 8-aligned, and annotating them would cost byte-wise access on the
tree's hottest paths to fix a problem they do not have.

Verified by reading an image written before the change: schfs_fsck --check
passes on structure, checksums, key ordering, data blocks and derived free
space, and the kernel mounts its own root unchanged.

Also here: mkschfs passed a null pointer to qsort for an empty directory. Every
implementation ignores it when the count is zero; the standard does not say they
have to.

make schfs-check now runs with no sanitizer output at all.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VQ7Qx8E1q1M1bbCq8QLHS2
2026-09-12 17:56:36 +02:00
..
1.0.md schfs: records at arbitrary offsets are packed, and the compiler is told 2026-09-12 17:56:36 +02:00
foundations.md docs: four directories, and a rule for when a thing leaves the roadmap 2026-09-12 17:13:35 +02:00
hybrid.md docs: four directories, and a rule for when a thing leaves the roadmap 2026-09-12 17:13:35 +02:00
init.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: four directories, and a rule for when a thing leaves the roadmap 2026-09-12 17:13:35 +02:00
roadmap.md net: a frame wakes the stack, instead of waiting for the clock 2026-09-12 17:23:46 +02:00
schapi.md docs: four directories, and a rule for when a thing leaves the roadmap 2026-09-12 17:13:35 +02:00
wayland.md docs: four directories, and a rule for when a thing leaves the roadmap 2026-09-12 17:13:35 +02:00

What happens next

Everything in this directory is unbuilt. When a piece of it is finished it leaves — deleted from here, rewritten as a description in ../architecture/. See the rule.

Read 1.0.md first.

It draws a finish line and puts most of the work below on the far side of it. Anything not named there is not being worked on, and the documents in this directory describe more than 1.0 contains.


The three current decisions

Taken together, because they turn out to need the same foundation.

wayland.md The GUI stack becomes Wayland. SchWM and SchDE are deleted; Schcom survives and changes its wire format.
hybrid.md The kernel becomes hybrid — drivers move out into userspace processes, starting with the GPU.
init.md PID 1 stops being a process and becomes a role the kernel guarantees is filled.

And the one they all wait on:

foundations.md Descriptor passing, shared memory, sockets in the filesystem. The critical path.

And the one that says which parts of the above are actually being worked on:

1.0.md The finish line. Four gates, and everything else explicitly deferred.

Two longer-horizon documents sit behind these: schapi.md, the API layering and the compatibility promise, and roadmap.md, which holds everything still open that is not one of the three above.


The order

Set by 1.0.md, which is the authority. In short:

0. Fix what is already wrong — first

Not a document of its own; it is Gate 0 of 1.0.md, assembled from the What it does not do sections in ../architecture/.

Before any new capability, and the reason is the one that put netdev_selftest() before the TCP/IP stack: a compositor built on a kernel with an unexplained hang and a socket layer that reports success for things it did not do will fail in ways indistinguishable from its own bugs.

1. foundations.md — the critical path

Both the Wayland work and the hybrid work stop here. Descriptor passing and shared memory are the substrate for handing a buffer to a compositor and for handing a device to a driver process. Doing it once for both is the entire reason these are one plan rather than three.

2. init.md — before the desktop, not after

A compositor being brought up for the first time crashes constantly, and something that restarts it and says why is worth far more during that work than at the end of it.

3. wayland.md — with the GPU driver still in the kernel

W1–W3 and a terminal. W4 and W5 are post-1.0.

4. hybrid.md — after 1.0

Deliberately last: designing a userspace driver interface with no driver consuming it produces an interface that is wrong in ways nobody can see. The compositor is the demanding consumer that makes the interface judgeable, so it has to exist first.


In one sentence

Fix what is broken, build the descriptor-passing and shared-memory substrate, make init survivable, put a terminal on the screen — and only then use the compositor as the pressure that shapes the userspace driver interface.


What this plan does not address

Stated here so it is not mistaken for covered:

  • No IOMMU, so the hybrid work isolates against bugs and not against a hostile driver.
  • No page cache, so foundations.md delivers a memfd and not a general answer to shared file mappings. The general answer is still owed.
  • No dynamic linking, so no Mesa, no accelerated clients, and no third party shipping a .so for anything.
  • A new compatibility surface between PID 1 and PID 2, created by a plan whose own schapi.md §3 spends a section warning about those.
  • The three open networking items — getsockname, routing, and interrupt-driven receive — are untouched by any of this and still open. They are in roadmap.md.