Ghost Kernel

After implementing the basic parts of the custom libc that now replaces Newlib, the system services and applications are up and ready again! There are still some issues with libstdc++-v3 that I'm currently fixing. In a first test, the window manager also turned out to run without a hassle with the new custom C library. *Newlib is gone.*

I did some cleanup in the project structure and reworked the build process, too. The code base was cleaned up a little. When I've finally decided for a license and eliminated some minor atrocities I'll go for a the first public source release. Stay tuned!

Making steady progress in my C library implementation. The headers & declarations are done and some parts are implemented.

Moving away from Newlib was painful so far, but writing a custom library in the end gives much more control to the way applications on the system work.

Not doing much else at the moment, I was on vacation and the top priority is bringing the lib to a status where the existing programs work again.

After struggling with some ugly userspace bugs for a few days that were mainly caused due to the way that the current C library (Newlib) is working and bound into the system, I decided to start writing my own C standard library implementation. Newlib has already caused too many problems and I'll be glad once its gone.

In the last few weeks I mostly did bug fixing and cleaning up the existing code base. This worked out well, much of the kernel code is cleaner and more efficient now. Currently I'm working on a deadlock somewhere in the UI communication process.

Window server library

I've reworked the way that programs communicate with the window server. This currently happens via pipes. I also added functionality to the userspace library, so it is now actually possible to create windows, buttons and also register an "action listener" (that is called when a click event is fired) on these buttons.

As a little example, a window with a text field and a button can be created like this:

g_window* myWindow = g_window::create(); g_textfield* textfield = g_textfield::create(); textfield->setBounds(g_rectangle(10, 10, 120, 20)); myWindow->addChild(textfield); g_button* button = g_button::create(); button->setBounds(g_rectangle(10, 30, 120, 20)); button->setTitle("Press me!"); myWindow->addChild(button); myWindow->setBounds(g_rectangle(200, 200, 140, 160)); myWindow->setVisible(true);

This style is plain and simple, and anyone who has ever created a UI with Swing will easily find their way into this framework.

Phew, that was quite a piece of work. I've finally decided to move the virtual filesystem to kernel space. The drivers still run in userspace and communicate with the kernel through messages & mapped areas. Performance is good so far, but there are still quite some improvements to do.

Filesystem paths

I moved away from the prefix:// style of filesystem paths. A single root seems much more convenient and clean. Currently all mountpoints exist in the root.

Unix pipes

The kernel now also supports unix pipes, which are used for standard input/output of programs, the communication of programs with the old window manager and probably also for other things like mouse/keyboard event transfer from the driver to programs (terminal/window manager).

Terminal

I also improved the terminal of Ghost when run in headless mode. You can now create multiple terminals and switch between them using Ctrl + Tab.