The .init section for global constructors in the kernel is unused at the
moment as the _init function is never invoked, but its existence means
it got linked at 128 MiB on i686. This address isn't mapped by the
kernel and the bootloader requires the machine to have that much
physical memory. Unfortunately that meant the i686 build didn't work on
machines with less than 129 MiB of memory.
The idle thread is now actually run when the system is idle because it
truly goes idle. The idle thread is made power efficient by using the hlt
instruction rather than a busy loop.
The new futex(2) system call is used to implement fast user-space mutexes,
condition variables, and semaphores. The same backend and design is used as
kutexes for truly sleeping kernel mutexes and condition variables.
The new exit_thread(2) flag EXIT_THREAD_FUTEX_WAKE wakes a futex.
Sleeping on clocks in the kernel now uses timers for true sleep.
The interrupt worker thread now truly sleeps when idle.
Kernel threads are now named.
This is a compatible ABI change.
Add short options for most long options. Rename the -i option to -H, but
support -i for compatibility until the next release cycle, where -i will
become the short option of --identifier. Rename --include to --headers
and support --include until the next release cycle.
Add carray(1) manual page which makes --help unnecessary, and remove
--version as it surely matches your local Sortix version.
The debugger has fallen behind and has become a maintenance burden. It was
the only user of the old kernel US layout system, which is good to get rid
of. The debugger didn't work with graphical output and was likely to
conflict with the new keyboard system if used, which no longer triggered it.
The kernel symbol code was removed to simplify the kernel.
The kernel debugger was an useful debugging feature, but it needs to be done
in a better way before it can be added back.