Overview: This maintenance version features a small number of user-visible improvements and added functionality, plus polish and bug fixes, but much more in terms of refactoring and fixing existing capabilities (particularly of the nascent networking code) and at the developer level.
Refactored existing network code, fixing things such as DHCP and ICMP, moving the various protocol implementations into their own source files, making adapter connections into kernelLinkedLists, improving packet memory management, etc.
The networking code can now route IP packets to other networks via the default gateway.
Implemented network ‘loopback’ capability, via a virtual network adapter that doesn’t normally appear as a network adapter, but which can be explicitly requested by name (‘loop’) or used via the loopback address(es) such as 127.0.0.1.
Enhanced the intelligence of the function that chooses the best network adapter for a new connection.
The ‘ping’ program has been enhanced to report response times.
The compression library can now add/delete files from .tar archives.
The compression library has a new archiveAddRecursive() function which can add directories recursively.
Added a new command-line ‘tar’ program for managing TAR archives.
Clarified the keyboard input of control characters and fixed up all of the existing keymaps.
Reworked the code that lays out and sizes window containers, and the layout/sizing of the main and system containers during window (re-)sizing.
Separated the one-time network initialization code from the code that enables networking, since enabling/disabling can be done any number of times.
Parameterized the building of device strings in the Network Devices (ifconfig) program, for the purpose of future GUI improvements.
Added kernel API functions networkDeviceHook(), networkDeviceUnhook(), and networkDeviceSniff() for use by userspace packet sniffing/inspection programs.
C++ development compatibility changes; mostly just renaming a few things that caused errors when compiling C++ using the system header files.
Implemented speedier versions of the kernelPageRoundUp() and kernelPageRoundDown() macros, that don’t use multiplications and divisions.
Exported the windowNewMenuBarIcon() function to userspace.
Created 3 new header files <sys/kernconf.h>, <sys/winconf.h>, and <sys/deskconf.h> to define the strings used in variable names in the corresponding kernel, window, and desktop configuration files.
Exported the kernel’s cpuGetMs() and cpuSpinMs() functions to user space, for timings and delays with millisecond granularity.
Added a ‘pointer’ item type to the kernel streams, with the potential to handle pointers of different sizes (e.g. 32-bit or 64-bit) depending on the environment.
The kernelDebugHex() function has been enhanced so that it shows printable ASCII characters in a parallel column.
The kernelDebugHex(), kernelDebugHexDwords(), and kernelDebugBinary() functions have been replaced with macros so that they will only produce output when debugging has been turned on for the source file.
Added proper UNIX/POSIX-style per-process integer file descriptors to the C library.
Added the C library function uname().
Added the C library functions opendir(), closedir(), readdir(), readdir_r(), and rewinddir() for reading directory contents.
Added the C library functions getcwd(), and chdir().
Added the C library functions mkdir(), and mkdtemp().
Added the C library functions fdopen(), mkstemp(), rmdir(), and unlink().
Added the C library function tmpfile().
The printf() family of C library functions can now print octal numbers using the ‘%o’ format.
Added the C library function sched_yield(), defined in <sys/sched.h>, for yielding time slices back to the scheduler.
Added an incomplete implementation of the C library function getaddrinfo() and its companions freeaddrinfo() and gai_strerror().
Added network-related C library functions getprotobynumber(), getservbyname(), and getservbyport().
Added the C library function strtok_r().
Added the C library functions poll(), recv(), and send().
Added the C library header files <netdb.h>, <poll.h>, <netinet/in.h>, and <sys/socket.h>, and the C library functions connect(), getprotobyname(), inet_ntop(), inet_pton(), and socket().
Added the network header file <arpa/inet.h>, initially for defining the macros htonl(), htons(), ntohl(), and ntohs().
Fixed: Dragging a window beyond the left edge of the screen caused a GUI crash and kernel panic.
Fixed: When resizing an icon list window (File Browser, etc) vertically, so that it was smaller than the original size, the icon list component/container wouldn’t resize to less than its original height, and the bottom of the scrollbar would show outside the window buffer.
Fixed: Adding windowMenuItems to a menu bar or changing windowMenu titles; tweaked the layout code.
Fixed: The ELF runtime loader so that it does not ignore ‘weak’ symbols in dynamic libraries.
Fixed: The ‘nm’ program was crashing partway through the symbol listing.
Fixed: kernelStream creation item sizes for network input streams and multitasker signal streams.
Fixed: When running in graphics mode, the PcNet network adapter driver failed to get device memory that was sufficiently low in the physical address space (24-bits maximum). By default, physical and I/O memory requests now attempt to allocate memory starting from 1MB, unless low memory is explicitly requested. The PcNet driver’s write() function now attempts to allocate low memory if required, and blocks until it can be freed.