OSDev.org

I would like to announce a new pre-release of ToaruOS, v3.0.0a1.

While I still have a long list of things I want to complete before the final 3.0 release, this alpha build represents many significant changes in the OS that I wanted to get out a bit earlier. Some of the biggest changes are hiding behind short and terse bullet-points in the release notes, so I'll call them out here:

• A brand new, rewritten dynamic linker, which is now integrated into the libc à la musl: they're the same shared object. ToaruOS's old dynamic linker was a pile of hacks; this new one adheres more closely to common standards, including proper symbol resolution. It also includes an ldd mode and support for LD_PRELOAD.
• Major changes to Misaka's VFS (with more to come later): a distinct concept of a file description separate from a file descriptor, separate from a cached inode; more complete coverage of FS operations (hardlinks, time modification); a more normal approach to mountpoints; plus initial support for "*at()" system calls (they still involve doing a full string-canonicalized path walk from the root, the file descriptors just carry additional path information: it's really no different from how working directories have always been handled in Toaru).
• An initial implementation of memory-mapped files and general support for mmap as the sole interface for acquiring userspace memory, which has drastically reduced runtime memory usage and improved the performance of larger applications.

There's also a lot of minor visual polish in this release, like a new panel theme, icons in window decorations, and improvements to the compositor's blur-behind functionality.

ToaruOS is a complete, independent operating system. The only third-party content in this release is a shared object build of libgcc and the Deja Vu TrueType font family. All other code and graphical resources are original works of human authorship by myself and a handful of contributors.