From owner-svn-doc-all@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Apr 11 02:10:57 2014
Return-Path: This report covers &os;-related projects between January and
- March 2014. This is the first of four reports planned for 2014.
Thanks to all the reporters for the excellent work! This report - contains 38 entries and we hope you enjoy reading it.
+ +Thanks to all the reporters for the excellent work! This + report contains 38 entries and we hope you enjoy reading it.
The deadline for submissions covering between April and June 2014 is July 7th, 2014.
@@ -92,11 +94,11 @@Chromium is the open source web browser project from which Google Chrome draws its source code. The browsers share the majority of code and features, though there are some minor - differences in features and they have different licensing. Over - the last four years, the Chromium team has been busy with - porting Chromium to &os;. This involves patching the browser so - that it runs on &os;, tracking and documenting security updates, - and merging patches back upstream.
+ differences in features and they have different licensing. + Over the last four years, the Chromium team has been busy with + porting Chromium to &os;. This involves patching the browser + so that it runs on &os;, tracking and documenting security + updates, and merging patches back upstream.While there are already several browsers available for &os;, advantages of Chromium are:
@@ -112,27 +114,28 @@ within a single weekend. -George Liaskos and &a.rene; are currently busy with submitting - the remaining patches specific to &os; back upstream. Apart from - making future updates easier, it sometimes also improves the - overall code quality.
+George Liaskos and &a.rene; are currently busy with + submitting the remaining patches specific to &os; back + upstream. Apart from making future updates easier, it + sometimes also improves the overall code quality.
-&a.jonathan; recently updated the Capsicum patches for Chromium - and is talking to upstream about them.
+&a.jonathan; recently updated the Capsicum patches for + Chromium and is talking to upstream about them.
ZFS is one of the premier features of &os;. The current documentation in the Handbook and elsewhere online is severely - lacking. Much of the original documentation from Sun and Oracle - has disappeared, moved, or is about the proprietary version of - ZFS.
- -New users have many questions about ZFS and yet there exists a - great deal more bad advice about ZFS than proper documentation. - The current ZFS chapter of the &os; Handbook starts off with the - required steps to configure an i386 machine to run ZFS. This is - more likely to scare off a new user than to educate them about - how to properly use ZFS.
+ lacking. Much of the original documentation from Sun and + Oracle has disappeared, moved, or is about the proprietary + version of ZFS. + +New users have many questions about ZFS and yet there exists + a great deal more bad advice about ZFS than proper + documentation. The current ZFS chapter of the &os; Handbook + starts off with the required steps to configure an i386 + machine to run ZFS. This is more likely to scare off a new + user than to educate them about how to properly use ZFS.
At BSDCan 2013, the process of writing an entirely new chapter of the Handbook on ZFS was started. Currently this @@ -193,12 +196,12 @@ ZFS.
The remaining section is the FAQ. To help users address the - most common problems they might run into with ZFS. It would be - useful to hear experiences, questions, misconceptions, gotchas, - stumbling blocks, and suggestions for the FAQ section from other - users. Also, a use cases section that highlights some of the - cases where ZFS provides advantages over traditional file - systems.
+ most common problems they might run into with ZFS. It would + be useful to hear experiences, questions, misconceptions, + gotchas, stumbling blocks, and suggestions for the FAQ section + from other users. Also, a use cases section that highlights + some of the cases where ZFS provides advantages over + traditional file systems.Please send suggestions to the freebsd-doc mailing list.
@@ -207,7 +210,8 @@The &os; Release Engineering Team is responsible for setting - and publishing release schedules for official project releases of - &os;, announcing code freezes and maintaining the respective - branches, among other things.
- -In early January, the team became aware of several last-minute - showstopper issues in &os; 10.0, which lead to an extension - in the final release builds. &os; 10.0-RELEASE was - announced on January 20, two months behind the original - schedule.
+ and publishing release schedules for official project releases + of &os;, announcing code freezes and maintaining the + respective branches, among other things. + +In early January, the team became aware of several + last-minute showstopper issues in &os; 10.0, which lead + to an extension in the final release builds. + &os; 10.0-RELEASE was announced on January 20, two months + behind the original schedule.
The schedule for the &os; 9.3-RELEASE cycle has been written and posted to the website, and the release cycle will @@ -252,8 +256,8 @@
There is ongoing work to integrate support for embedded architectures as part of the release build process. At this - time, support exists for a number of ARM kernels, in particular - the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, and WandBoard.
+ time, support exists for a number of ARM kernels, in + particular the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, and WandBoard.The &os; Documentation Engineering Team is responsible for - defining and following up documentation goals for the committers - in the Documentation project. The team is pleased to announce a - new member — &a.wblock;. In early March, the &os; - Documentation Engineering Team members assumed responsibility - for the &os; Webmaster Team.
+ defining and following up documentation goals for the + committers in the Documentation project. The team is pleased + to announce a new member — &a.wblock;. In early March, + the &os; Documentation Engineering Team members assumed + responsibility for the &os; Webmaster Team. @@ -304,34 +308,35 @@Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, wide-spectrum, and object-oriented high-level computer - programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages, - originally targeted at embedded and real-time systems. The - number of Ada ports in the collection has grown significantly - since the last report six months ago. There are almost 50 - Ada-related ports now, with new ones getting added all the time.
+ programming language, extended from Pascal and other + languages, originally targeted at embedded and real-time + systems. The number of Ada ports in the collection has grown + significantly since the last report six months ago. There are + almost 50 Ada-related ports now, with new ones getting added + all the time.The previous plan was to move from the GCC 4.7-based GNAT - compiler to a GCC 4.8-based one, but finally GCC 4.8 was skipped - and now a GCC 4.9-based GNAT is the standard Ada compiler, which - fully supports the new ISO standard, Ada 2012. Moving to a - newer compiler allowed several important ports like PolyOrb and - GPRBuild to be upgraded to the latest available versions. In - fact, almost every Ada port is currently at its most recent - upstream version.
+ compiler to a GCC 4.8-based one, but finally GCC 4.8 was + skipped and now a GCC 4.9-based GNAT is the standard Ada + compiler, which fully supports the new ISO standard, Ada 2012. + Moving to a newer compiler allowed several important ports + like PolyOrb and GPRBuild to be upgraded to the latest + available versions. In fact, almost every Ada port is + currently at its most recent upstream version.For non-Windows-based Ada development, &os; and DragonFly are - now undisputed as the go-to platforms. The other candidates are - Debian and Fedora, but there are few Ada software on those - platforms that are not also in the &os; ports tree, but the versions are - much older. The Ports Collection also features software not found - anywhere else such as the USAFA's Ironsides DNS server, - libsparkcrypto, matreshka, GNATDroid (Android cross-compiler) and - several developer libraries.
+ now undisputed as the go-to platforms. The other candidates + are Debian and Fedora, but there are few Ada software on those + platforms that are not also in the &os; ports tree, but the + versions are much older. The Ports Collection also features + software not found anywhere else such as the USAFA's Ironsides + DNS server, libsparkcrypto, matreshka, GNATDroid (Android + cross-compiler) and several developer libraries.A desired addition to the Ada ports will be SPARK 2014 (see - links), which should cement &os; as an option for professional, - safety-critical application development. This package should - have its first release by early summer.
+ links), which should cement &os; as an option for + professional, safety-critical application development. This + package should have its first release by early summer. @@ -385,8 +390,8 @@We also follow development of core components (available in - your repository). See link for documentation on how to upgrade - those libraries.
+ your repository). See link for documentation on how to + upgrade those libraries.PCI Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) is an optional part - of the PCIe standard that provides hardware acceleration for the - virtualization of PCIe devices. When SR-IOV is in use, a - function in a PCI device (known as a Physical Function, or PF) - will present multiple Virtual PCI Functions (VF) on the PCI bus. - These VFs are fully independent PCI devices that have - access to the resources of the PF. For example, on a network +
PCI Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) is an optional + part of the PCIe standard that provides hardware acceleration + for the virtualization of PCIe devices. When SR-IOV is in + use, a function in a PCI device (known as a Physical Function, + or PF) will present multiple Virtual PCI Functions (VF) on the + PCI bus. These VFs are fully independent PCI devices that have + access to the resources of the PF. For example, on a network interface card, VFs could transmit and receive packets independent of the PF.
@@ -446,16 +451,17 @@ use PCI passthrough to assign the VFs to the VMs. This would allow multiple VMs to share access to the PCI device without having to do any expensive communication with the hypervisor, - greatly increasing performance of performing I/O from a VM. + greatly increasing performance of performing I/O from a + VM. -There are two parts to this project. The first is implementing - an API in the PCI subsystem for creating VFs and configuring - standard PCI features like BARs. The second part is updating - individual drivers for PCI devices that support SR-IOV to - configure their VFs. For example, a network interface driver - will typically have to assign a MAC address to a VF and - configure the interface to route packets destined for that MAC - address to the VF.
+There are two parts to this project. The first is + implementing an API in the PCI subsystem for creating VFs and + configuring standard PCI features like BARs. The second part + is updating individual drivers for PCI devices that support + SR-IOV to configure their VFs. For example, a network + interface driver will typically have to assign a MAC address + to a VF and configure the interface to route packets destined + for that MAC address to the VF.
At this point only SR-IOV support for the ixgbe(4) driver is planned. The PCI subsystem API is designed to be @@ -464,12 +470,12 @@ currently not planned due to lack of time and hardware.
At present, ixgbe(4) is able to create VFs and the - ixgbevf driver is able to pass traffic. There is still - a fair amount of work to support VLAN tags, multicast addresses, - and other features on the VFs. Also, the VF configuration needs - to be better integrated with the PF initialization path to - ensure that resets of the PF do not interrupt operation of the - VFs.
+ ixgbevf driver is able to pass traffic. There is + still a fair amount of work to support VLAN tags, multicast + addresses, and other features on the VFs. Also, the VF + configuration needs to be better integrated with the PF + initialization path to ensure that resets of the PF do not + interrupt operation of the VFs.Since the last status report, we have been hard at work - polishing the framework in many different areas. The highlights - are:
+ polishing the framework in many different areas. The + highlights are:AFS is a distributed network filesystem that originated from - the Andrew Project at Carnegie-Mellon University. OpenAFS is an - open-source implementation of the AFS protocol derived from IBM - AFS, which was released under the IBM Public License. OpenAFS - on &os; (the net/openafs port) is suitable for light - use, but is not yet production ready.
+ the Andrew Project at Carnegie-Mellon University. OpenAFS is + an open-source implementation of the AFS protocol derived from + IBM AFS, which was released under the IBM Public License. + OpenAFS on &os; (the net/openafs port) is suitable + for light use, but is not yet production ready.We got a chance to pick up this porting project after some - hiatus. Recent work focused on investigating the bugs preventing - the use of a disk cache for caching file data. An internal - "lookupname" abstraction was intended to return an unlocked, - referenced vnode, but instead returned a locked, referenced - vnode, leading to various failure modes depending on the number - of kernel debugging options enabled.
+ hiatus. Recent work focused on investigating the bugs + preventing the use of a disk cache for caching file data. An + internal "lookupname" abstraction was intended to return an + unlocked, referenced vnode, but instead returned a locked, + referenced vnode, leading to various failure modes depending + on the number of kernel debugging options enabled. -Libvirt is a virtualization library providing a common API for - various hypervisors (Qemu/KVM, Xen, LXC, and others), and also a - popular library used by a number of projects. Libvirt 1.2.2, - released on March, 2014, was the first release to include bhyve - support. Enabling bhyve support allows consumers to use bhyve - in libvirt-ready applications without major efforts.
+Libvirt is a virtualization library providing a common API + for various hypervisors (Qemu/KVM, Xen, LXC, and others), and + also a popular library used by a number of projects. Libvirt + 1.2.2, released on March, 2014, was the first release to + include bhyve support. Enabling bhyve support allows + consumers to use bhyve in libvirt-ready applications without + major efforts.
Currently, libvirt supports almost all essential features of - bhyve, such as Virtual Machine lifecycle (start, stop), bridged - networking, and virtio/SATA driver support. The work continues - to implement more API calls and to cover more of features - offered by bhyve.
+ bhyve, such as Virtual Machine lifecycle (start, stop), + bridged networking, and virtio/SATA driver support. The work + continues to implement more API calls and to cover more of + features offered by bhyve.