2016-05-18-releases

Wed, 18 May 2016 15:30:00 +0000

GNU Hurd 0.8, GNU Mach 1.7, GNU MIG 1.7 released. Details.

We're pleased to announce new releases!

GNU Hurd 0.8, NEWS:

Version 0.8 (2016-05-18)


The netfs library is using the lockless reference-counting primitives
for both peropen and node objects now, and the global reference
counting lock has been removed.


The integer hashing library gained a new interface to use non-integer
keys.  It is now used in libdiskfs' and nfs' node cache, and the ftpfs
translator.


Several bugs in our native fakeroot tool have been fixed improving
stability and correctness of the translation.


The devnode translator and the hurd-slab library have been merged into this
repository.


The code has been cleaned up, and we fixed numerous bugs, most notably
a crash in pfinet, a locking bug in libdiskfs, and an out-of-bounds
access in ext2fs' block cache.

Release tarballs may be downloaded from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hurd/, http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hurd/, or checked out of Git, http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hurd/hurd.git. SHA1 checksums:

38585aed93645704477d91d01136e1ae750a5ecb  hurd-0.8.tar.bz2
531d5035427830e87828a79bf6794531250784d0  hurd-0.8.tar.bz2.sig
6383479f30933d760c6d981fdd37df27adb5f0bb  hurd-0.8.tar.gz
63f58d392cb6e0c0ebd71e725938a13a5cab2392  hurd-0.8.tar.gz.sig

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: documentation, what is the GNU Hurd.

GNU Mach 1.7, NEWS:

Version 1.7 (2016-05-18)


The code has been updated to work with newer versions of GCC, and numerous bugs
have been fixed throughout the code, including a pageout deadlock.  The code
uses integer types from <stdint.h> now instead of the old Mach types.


The VM cache policy change has been merged.  The kernel now caches
unreferenced VM objects unconditionally instead of using a fixed
limit.


The physical page allocator of the X15 kernel has been integrated, and
is now used directly by the slab allocator.  This increases the kernel
heap addressing important scalability issues.


The gsync synchronization mechanism was added, similar to the Linux kernel's
futexes, to allow efficient and powerful userland synchronization.


Support for profiling kernel code from userland through sampling was added.

Release tarballs may be downloaded from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnumach/, http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnumach/, or checked out of Git, http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hurd/gnumach.git. SHA1 checksums:

4438c7c10f8eef019ada45b749c0796d620d08de  gnumach-1.7.tar.bz2
6cdf299118066e3280dcc68f75477659fc783f7d  gnumach-1.7.tar.bz2.sig
5474b2cdc01cb002149db08d745fdab741470c65  gnumach-1.7.tar.gz
018aa0551e87c4b5eeb900934491811f46ab8b78  gnumach-1.7.tar.gz.sig

GNU Mach is the GNU distribution of the Mach microkernel, upon which a GNU Hurd system is based. The microkernel 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: documentation.

GNU MIG 1.7, NEWS:

Version 1.7 (2016-05-18)


MIG now has a test suite.  It includes a set of valid and invalid
definition files that MIG will try to process.  For valid
definitions, GCC will compile the stubs to check if valid C code was
generated.


The generated code uses integer types from <stdint.h> now instead of
the old Mach types.


Code that was hard-coding the word size has been identified and
fixed.


Support for the obsolete kinds of RPC routines 'functions',
'procedures', and 'simple procedures' has been removed.


MIG now emits code that casts objects translated from capabilities
to the correct C type.

Release tarballs may be downloaded from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mig/, http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mig/, or checked out of Git, http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hurd/mig.git. SHA1 checksums:

25d87f0271678d044a8af1f45492a96bee32e486  mig-1.7.tar.bz2
481dce92b8eb718231bf9d409c0e0c9337dc1f90  mig-1.7.tar.bz2.sig
f1bd05d1b353653f49dbbb44a4624e65c7be0a2e  mig-1.7.tar.gz
59f71517cd1be26635a27da423bcf75e2399a42e  mig-1.7.tar.gz.sig

GNU MIG is the GNU distribution of the Mach 3.0 Interface Generator (MIG). This tool translates Remote Procedure Call (RPC) definition files to C code, and is required to compile any packages that are receiving or invoking RPCs, such as GNU Mach, GNU Hurd, and the GNU C Library (glibc) when compiled for the Hurd. More detailed: documentation.

glibc-2.19-hurd+libpthread-20160518

Based on the glibc 2.19 release, we include additional changes for GNU Hurd support, and bundle GNU Hurd's libpthread.

Snapshot tarballs may be downloaded from ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/hurd/, http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/hurd/, or checked out of Git, http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hurd/glibc.git and http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hurd/libpthread.git. SHA1 checksums:

3722b7f52aac89c66f064e1e6d19ec9b92ffc9e0  glibc-2.19-hurd+libpthread-20160518.tar.bz2
69dfe1297013056b4b0d6436a1b3906c1bb67a52  glibc-2.19-hurd+libpthread-20160518.tar.bz2.sig
2795bacc85c799a028577089c422ff4ef9b876bc  glibc-2.19-hurd+libpthread-20160518.tar.gz
a7af1d2500f35413003f08801e258f3666dfcb87  glibc-2.19-hurd+libpthread-20160518.tar.gz.sig

The GNU C Library (glibc) implements a system's standard library functions (as described by ISO C, and POSIX, for example). An important part of the Hurd actually resides in glibc: here, the system interfaces are implemented on top of the Hurd IPC protocols. This is different to the Linux port, where most simple system interfaces are in fact simply forwarded to/implemented as system calls.

Many thanks to all the people who are helping!

If you want to give the Hurd a try, you may easily do so with Debian GNU/Hurd.

The GNU Hurd system currently runs on 32-bit x86 machines. To compile the Hurd, you need a toolchain configured to target i?86-gnu; you cannot use a toolchain targeting GNU/Linux.