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[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2012, 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]]
[[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable
id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license
is included in the section entitled [[GNU Free Documentation
License|/fdl]]."]]"""]]
[[!meta date="2013-01-08 21:30 UTC"]]
Two quarters of the Hurd, Q1 and Q2 of 2012: *Google Summer of Code*, *Barrier
of Entry*, *Core*, *Porting*.
[[!if test="included()" then="""[[!toggle id=full_news
text="Details."]][[!toggleable id=full_news text="[[!paste id=full_news]]"]]"""
else="
[[!paste id=full_news]]"]]
[[!cut id="full_news" text="""
**Google Summer of Code**
Jérémie Koenig released the final [[user/jkoenig/java/report]] on his Google
Summer of Code project *Java on Hurd* along with a summary of his changes and
the
[challenges](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-01/msg00062.html)
he faced. In a similar track, Samuel Thibault
[merged the slab branch](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-02/msg00010.html),
concluding Maksym Planeta's Goggle Summer of Code project on an improved memory
allocator.
Pino Toscano improved the Hurd implementations of
[nanosleep](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-04/msg00130.html),
[ptsname_r](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-04/msg00122.html),
[getlogin_r](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-04/msg00121.html),
[getgroups](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-04/msg00120.html),
and
[sendto](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-06/msg00009.html),
for POSIX compliance.
**Barrier of Entry**
Samuel Thibault, Ludovic Courtès and Thomas Schwinge reduced the
barrier of entry into hacking the Hurd.
As part of this, Samuel prepared
[DDE in incubator](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-02/msg00037.html),
making about half the Linux kernel 2.6.29.6's network drivers compile on the
Hurd, together with a
[netdde debian package and testing notes](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-02/msg00038.html).
Ludovic contributed
[a continuous testing framework](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-03/msg00019.html)
using a Nix-based GNU QEMU image. Thanks to his work, we now have
[automatic tests](http://hydra.nixos.org/jobset/gnu/hurd-master)
([background](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-04/msg00104.html)).
Thomas on the other hand
[moved](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-03/msg00063.html)
the translators
[cvsfs](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hurd/incubator.git/log/?h=cvsfs/master)
and
[smbfs](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hurd/incubator.git/log/?h=smbfs/master)
into the [[incubator Git repository|source_repositories/incubator]], as well as
[libfuse](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hurd/incubator.git/log/?h=libfuse/master),
reducing the barrier of entry to improving them, so integrating cvs
and samba in the filesystem and using FUSE translators can be
stabilized more easily. Also he
[improved the Hurd build system](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-04/msg00087.html),
removing automatically generated files from the source repository, as now
*running autoreconf is all you need* to create them.
Roland McGrath
[merged many glibc changes](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-05/msg00033.html)
for upstream inclusion, reducing the maintenance load for our regular glibc
development work.
**The Core of the Hurd**
Ludovic Courtès, Maksym Planeta, Samuel Thibault and Richard Braun
took a dive into the core of the Hurd. Ludovic
[fixed invalid port deallocation in `symlink'](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-03/msg00013.html)
and
[made console-run resilient against missing /dev/console](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-03/msg00002.html). Maksym
[tested the performance of tmpfs](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-03/msg00040.html),
showing a speedup for apt-get calls from 22 seconds with
[[hurd/libstore/examples/ramdisk]] and 32 seconds with
[[hurd/translator/ext2fs]] to 16 seconds with [[hurd/translator/tmpfs]] for
apt-get invocations, showing the possible wins due to going deep. An obvious
use case for tmpfs are
[faster Hurd LiveCDs](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-03/msg00050.html). Samuel
made it easier to dive in by
[improving debugging in GNU Mach](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-03/msg00032.html). The
debugger is now aware of the difference between kernel space and user
space. This should substantially reduce the development time for
features in Mach by giving
[nicer stack traces](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-03/msg00047.html). And
in the deepest core of the Mach, Richard improved memory mapping
[with a red-black tree](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-04/msg00109.html),
which should speed up memory access.
**Porting**
As in the previous quarters, we also saw lots of ported packages,
including Richard's work on
[libpcap](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-01/msg00059.html)
which brought wireshark and
[pcap_inject](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-03/msg00000.html)
for easier network testing,
[libtool](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-02/msg00023.html)
thanks to Samuel Thibault and Peter O'Gorman,
[gnat](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-03/msg00060.html)
by Svante Signell for Ada support (a language used in many
mission-critical applications such as automotive and aerospace,
offering features like strong typing, modularity, run-time checking
and parallel processing), and
[iconx](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-06/msg00004.html)
thanks to Samuel Thibault, which fulfills a requirement of tests for
many packages, among them glib - and allowed Svante Signell to port
the literate programming language noweb and ifupdown. Also Thomas
DiModica
[merged](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-06/msg00018.html)
the cthreads to pthreads patch and
[added a branch for it](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-07/msg00087.html)
to make it easier to work on getting Hurd to use the more current
pthreads.
With his [[Debian GNU/Hurd|hurd/running/debian]] maintainer hat on, Samuel
Thibault posted some new [bits from the Debian GNU/Hurd
porters](http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00002.html).
And now, as a final note, we want to share a story about real-life
debugging on a Hurd system; IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2012-03-02:
<youpi> yay GNU/Hurd
<youpi> I have added i_translator check in e2fsck, it was missing
<youpi> I had a volume that was keeping making ext2fs crash
<youpi> with a reproductible scenario
<youpi> could easily work out it was i_translator, then add a
check to e2fsck, run it, which indeed fixed, them, and voilà,
ext2fs was working again
<youpi> all that on the same machine with *no* system reboot
<youpi> just ext2fs restart :)
So if you want to experience enjoyable debugging of code deep in the core of your system,
please [[get in contact|contact_us]] -- and maybe already grab the [[source
code|source_repositories]].
---
The **GNU Hurd** is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a
collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file
systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are
implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux). [[More
detailed|hurd/documentation]].
**GNU Mach** is the microkernel upon which a GNU Hurd system is based. It
provides an Inter Process Communication (IPC) mechanism that the Hurd uses to
define interfaces for implementing in a distributed multi-server fashion the
services a traditional operating system kernel provides. [[More
detailed|microkernel/mach/gnumach]].
"""]]
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