NetBSD/doc/ROADMAP

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# $NetBSD: ROADMAP,v 1.6 2006/01/08 21:57:26 agc Exp $
A high-level roadmap for NetBSD
This file contains a general map of where we would like to take
NetBSD over the next N years. It is not highly detailed or overly
specific about each item. There are several different "TODO" files
and "NetBSD Projects" lists in various places that contain some
more detailed plans. This is the framework in which those projects
and plans are expected to fit.
As this is a volunteer project, there are no specific dates beside
these items. These items may or may not get picked up in any order,
and the roadmap may change as technologies and perceived needs
change.
The roadmap, of course, is constructed in the context of the
Project's (broad) goals:
* clean design * stable * fast
* clean licensing * portable * interoperable
* conformant * commercial-ready * research-ready
* hobby-ready
In general, we are headed for:
* "State of the art" tools (current (and stable) GNU tools,
addition of Solaris's dtrace or similar functionality, kernel
core dumps on all platforms and post-mortem analysis tools,
performance analysis tools with support for hardware assists
like PMCs)
* Support for all devices without encumbered code
* Managed growth of the base system
* Minimal GPL / LGPL code in the base system
* Maximal performance without compromising portability
* "State of the art" technology in the kernel and userland
* No bugs, no security vulnerabilities
* In combination with pkgsrc, a complete system for a variety
of users, administrators, and researchers: desktops, embedded
devices, servers, workstations, and portables
This is, by no means, a comprehensive list, and purposefully aggressive.
One of the many challenges will be to achieve excellence in each arena
we tackle and not settle for being a "jack of all trades, master of none."
The following, more specific, items are divided into rough categories:
1. Platform independent kernel
2. Platform independent userland
3. Platform dependent kernel
4. Platform dependent userland
5. Other
If you'd like to take on a project, please record your name/email,
the date that you're claiming a project (or part of a project--if
a part, please specify the part), and an expected completion date.
This will hopefully avoid both duplication of effort and too many
or too-extended stalls.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A VOLUNTEER PROJECT, AND THAT NONE OF THESE
RELEASE VERSIONS, OR NAMES, IS A GUARANTEE OF THE FUNCTIONALITY BEING
COMPLETE OR EVEN STARTED. INTERESTED PARTIES SHOULD CONTACT
core@NetBSD.org
FOR MORE INFORMATION.
1. Platform independent kernel
==============================
aa. Modular scheduler supporting CPU affinity and some soft RT features.
The BSD scheduler is good for a wide variety of operating conditions,
but some applications really want some soft real-time capabilities and
multi-processor systems could benefit from taking processor affinity
into account (including support for HT CPUs).
Responsible: matt (possibly)
ETA: ?
ab. Reduction of the giant lock
There are several proposals for the best way forward on this, but
we really need a couple of people with time to step forward and
lead us here.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
ac. Expansion of wedge support
Complete the development of wedges and retire disklabels except
where needed for compatibility.
Responsible: thorpej (possibly)
ETA: 5.0
ad. Volume management
Allow us to grow, shrink, and move partitions (and, where possible,
filesystems).
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
ae. High-performance, maybe log-based, journalled fs w/ snapshot support
Addition of logs, journals, and snapshots to FFS is a lot, another
filesystem could be cleaner and faster.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
af. Expansion of ieee1394 support
Where possible, fully support DV, disk, and network devices.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: Preliminary firewire support is in 4.0
ag. Generic device hotplug support
Support hotplug of all devices and busses that support it. This
should be divided into subcategories and does cross over some into
platform-dependent areas. SATA, SCSI, FC, USB, Firewire,
PCI (PCI-X, and PCI-Express), etc. There is some rudimentary
support present, but it is far from comprehensive.
Responsible: bouyer
ETA: ?
ah. Suspend and resume support
We should be able to fully utilize suspend and resume on PCs, macppc,
and anyone else who supports it in hardware (sparc, hpcsh, hpcarm, etc).
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
ai. Complete support for LWPs
There are still vestiges of the kernel that predate LWPification
and should be updated. [ What other than ktrace? ]
Responsible: darrenr, skrll, christos did ktrace-lwp
ETA: 4.0
aj. PTHREAD_CONCURRENCY > 1 support
A single process that uses threads should be able to reliably
utilize more than one CPU.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
ak. AIO support
POSIX aio_*() with full support for Asynchronous I/O (AIO) in the
kernel.
Responsible: briggs
ETA: 5.0?
al. Modern parallel port support
Complete support for bidirectional and "advanced" functionality
from parallel ports.
Responsible: jdolecek
ETA: ?
am. NFSv4
Bring our NFS up to current standards.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
an. Update the locking mechanisms in the kernel
This requires some platform support. A good bit of work is on the
now-archaic "newlock" branch, from thorpej. It requires some
overhaul of cpu_switch/scheduler so that mutex_*(9) and ltsleep(9)
can interlock.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
ao. Review TCP/IP developments
Fix NewReno
Responsible: mycroft
ETA: (3.0)
Add SACK support to the kernel.
Responsible: kurahone
ETA: (3.0)
Look into RFC3168 (ECN, http://www.icir.org/floyd/ecn.html) and
other "recent" and current TCP/IP research. Adapt our stack to the
more modern world.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
ap. Kernel linker (ala FreeBSD's kld)
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
aq. CARP/VRRP
Functionality is great, but there might be some concern here over
Cisco patents.
Responsible: Liam Foy
ETA: 5.0?
ar. UDF filesystem support
OpenBSD has recently added this.
Responsible: reinoud
ETA: 4.0
as. RAIDFrame support for 3-way RAID 1
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
at. RAIDFrame support for RAID 6
Responsible: oster
ETA: 5.0?
au. More modern drivers
We lack support for a number of more modern devices (PCI-Express,
RAID cards, etc.) that are supported on other open source OSes.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
av. iSCSI initiator support
We should be able to utilize iSCSI volumes.
Responsible: agc
ETA: 5.0?
aw. Run-time changeable limits to SysV IPC
Some of the limits for SysV IPC are hardcoded in the kernel
configuration--these should be changable via sysctl.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
2. Platform independent userland
================================
aa. Keep up with the X world
Track X.org progress. Maintain existing XFree86.
Responsible: a cast of thousands
ETA: ongoing
ab. Reentrant libraries
Make sure that all libraries are re-entrant and usable for threaded
applications.
Responsible: ginsbach and others
ETA: 5.0?
ac. gcc updates
This requires some work to rework the gcc4 builds to work with BSD
make(1) or update BSD make(1) or consider the unthinkable.
Responsible: mrg, matt
ETA: 4.0?
ad. gdb updates
Responsible: TBD
ETA: 5.0?
ae. binutils updates
Probably go along with gdb updates.
Responsible: skrll
ETA: 4.0?
af. Better post-mortem debugging tools
It would be useful to have something between ps/*stat/etc. and
gdb with a core file. Something, perhaps, like SysV(?) crash(8).
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
ag. Better 802.11 utilities and support
To truly support mobile users, we need better support for scanning
for base stations and affiliating with them.
Responsible: dyoung, skrll, scw and others
ETA: 4.0
ah. Internationalization
Citrus, wide-char curses (SoC integration?), collation, localized
printf with positional parameter support, time & currency
support, etc. NetBSD has a global user and developer base and
our i18n support should reflect that.
(a) Support cond. printf fmt tnozaki 3.0
Responsible: tnozaki
ETA: 3.0
(b) Support LC_COLLATE
(c) mklocale(1) -> localedef(1)
(d) wchar_t in C++
(e) i18nize userland commands
(f) in-kernel iconv
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
ai. System packages
In some fashion, we need to support system packages. This is at
least to allow for sane binary audits and binary patches.
Responsible: apb
ETA: 4.0
aj. Provide support for binary packages in install
We should have an integrated install that can install a desktop as
functional as other free operating systems. Without sacrificing
the quick and clean basic installs that we have now. An extension
of sysinst might fit the bill. Or a tool that's both invoked by
sysinst and available on a running system.
Responsible: agc and others
ETA: 4.0
ak. Native signing/privacy software
This could be BPG (from SoC) or openpgp-sdk.
Responsible: agc, cjs and others
ETA: 4.0?
al. Userland version identification
What binaries are installed? Who really knows? This relates at
least somewhat to (ai).
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
3. Platform dependent kernel
============================
aa. Move evb ports to evb* if they're not already there (sandpoint)
The existing evb* ports are kind of catch-all ports for eval boards.
Some of the existing non-evb* ports really belong in the evb* category.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
ab. m68k ports need to share more code
Some progress has been made here in recent years, but there is more
work to be done.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
ac. Kernel core dump support for all platforms
Some platforms (PowerPC ports, ARM ports, etc.) don't have full
support for kernel core dumps and post-mortem debugging through
libkvm. This should be updated.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
ad. NDIS
Support for binary network drivers on x86 platforms.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
4. Platform dependent userland
==============================
ab. m68k should be able to share sets
Some progress has been made here in recent years, but there is more
work to be done.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
5. Other
========
aa. More and better regression tests
The suite of tests that we have now is limited. We should expand
these and provide systems (or manage a volunteer pool?) to run the
tests on -current and release branches on a variety of platforms.
( Perhaps virtualize some with qemu or similar? )
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?
ab. Native Java on multiple platforms
Getting i386, amd64, sparc64, and PowerPC would be a good start,
although PowerPC will require more work. We have the go-ahead,
but we need the people to work on it.
Responsible: the Java porting crew
ETA: ?
ac. Power control framework
Related to suspend/resume support, we should have some framework
for dynamically stepping processor speed, controlling fans, shutting
down and/or powering subsystems to conserve power and keep the system
with thermal limits.
Responsible: TBD
ETA: ?