Board.KolibriOS.org

Hi!

Due to a series of unfortunate events, I haven't been able to follow the exact schedule I provided in the beginning, and have also postponed my one-month report by quite some time. This all is deeply regretted by me, and was totally unintended. Unfortunately, time once spent doesn't come back; however, one can always cope up. yogev_ezra offered me to give up this job; as far as I'm concerned, I'm still willing (and think I can make it), and will provide a schedule for the same. I saw people discussing how I haven't visited the forums in 5 days -- unfortunately, I live in India with a crappy internet connection (which I complained about at the starting of the job); don't fear about me running away (me having all the money gives probably cause, but really, it isn't), and you can always check if I'm just avoiding kolibri-os boards by seeing if I'm active on IRC or not.

Here is my -- currently -- mid-term report:

As for my current progress, I've finished requisite things like block allocation, deallocation; inode allocation, deallocation, and all sorts of funky things with inodes already (like, adding a block in the "blocks of inode" list). I've also added a unlink function, and all requisites for link are there. For actual visible "syscalls," you unfortunately only get Delete and a SetFileInfo. All other syscalls are coming up soon (see schedule described below). Note that this all wasn't just raw addition -- I refactored all previous code, added (legible) English comments, factored in the new disk-handling code originally written by CleverMouse, structured code...

I've put up all code on my FTP directory, including a patch. You should apply the patch -- but if you want, I've uploaded the ext2/ directory.

All in all, if I were putting up this report when I was destined to, it'd have been on-track. However, due to the delay, I'm a little off track. The way I plan to get back-on-track is:

• By Monday, 12th August, I'd add Rewrite and CreateFolder.
• By Sunday, 17th August, I'll add the Write syscall, and fill in all the tiny syscalls (stuff like SetFileEnd, which shouldn't be much pain).
• Since ext3 and ext4 mainly add two things -- indexed directories, and extents -- I'll spend roughly two to two&half weeks on this addition.
• I'll then factor in all small-yet-important changes in ext3 & ext4.
• I'll by this time be refactoring stuff, etc.

I'm stopping providing text-based reports, since they don't have much value. Instead, I'll post here on my progress on the above schedule (*on* dates I've said), where the most minimal post I do can be "On schedule, code uploaded." I'll update the ftp with all the recent code, or maybe svn too, if allowed.

As of now, I'm willing to take as much criticism as possible. Bug reports, style issues, you put it all. I'll also listen at all criticism at the delay, but some things aren't exactly in one's hands...

With regards,
Shikhin

Hey, don't worry, keep up good mood and keep working We really need this!

Shikhin
I'm glad you're back with some of the results. Yes, I agree that life is making some changes in our plans. I hope that you have successfully completed this great work. That's one small step for programmer, one giant leap for project. Poyekhali! (Let's Go!)

P.S. This was a reference to Neil Armstrong and Yuri Gagarin.

_________________
Всем чмоки в этом проекте! Засуньте эти 11 лет себе в жопу!

I'll just repost here what I've sent you in PM:
Other than that, I wish you good luck in completing this project, and hope that only good things happen to you and your family in the future.

Hi,

I'm on schedule, but the current code has a couple of bugs (which I'll hunt down soon). The next update with code will most probably be on the 17th.

Regards,
Shikhin

I heard some rumors about "ext4 didn't working". Can it be fixed too?

Please post an update on your progress. "No progress was made since the last update" is ok; but no update is not ok.

A re-post from our PM conversation:

Hi,

I've uploaded my most recent diff; linking is coming near to a finish. I was about to rush it to an end today, but yogev_ezra informed me that my month long absence meant an additional month of work. That should be good, considering the fact that I just realized the importance of communication -- something I'll take much more seriously this time about.

On the forefront of communication, I noticed several things which I'd love to point out, something I've only documented in the code, as of now:

• Structure. Since KolibriOS has a monolithic kernel, I do see some problems in all components fitting together. Roughly everything has been divided well, but it's better to not have too large a file containing one unit -- module, as I like to call them -- and split it all. That's the approach I followed with the ext2 code; rather than having a large file, I split it into the ext2/ directory. ext2.asm was sufficient to be included from the kernel, while ext2.inc contained defines for every component of the ext2 driver. I'd love to see more splitting up of such components across.
• Naming. I can only talk about the ext2 driver, and the part that interfaced with it. I noticed that the naming wasn't always consistent, and sometimes, since I don't use an IDE or such, I'd forget some obscure function name. Now that I've talked about modules, the way I like to name my functions is: "<module>_<submodule>_<func-meat>". An example function would become ext2_inode_write. I haven't changed all the names yet to align with this, but I'd soon.
• Miscellaneous components I found missing. I found several things to be lacking in, while coding. For example, I found no uniform "get_time" thingy, no uniform time-conversions (more on it, later) or string-conversions. I wouldn't document them all here, they are placed at the top of ext2.inc, with a "Please move this to appropriate region" comment, with appropriate region defined. I'd love to do that, once my KSoC is over.
• Timing. Over to timing, I realized that you just use the CMOS. That's fairly inaccurate, considering the accuracy of the RTC. What most OSes are recommended to do is to get the time from the RTC at boot, and then use the PIT, or any local timer, to track time. You'd do that in some form of unix time, perhaps with higher precision, such that you'd be tracking milliseconds since "boot time secured from RTC." You could then, every X seconds, also update the RTC so it doesn't go way too wrong. The rest of the OS should use this time, and the OS should provide fair abstractions to convert it to <XYZ-format>.

I think that's it, but I might've missed something. I'm also pushing for English-only comments; English is a fairly standardised language for all projects, and Russian comments just puts me off in such a large project, IMHO.

Regards,
Shikhin

Thank you very much for the report - that's the way it should have been from the beginning, and this is the way it should be done from now on till the end of your project (October 17th as I mentioned to you on IRC).
I don't have any objection if the code you work on (ext2/3/4) has English-only comments.

Hi,



Of course.



I'm not talking just about my code, but most of the project. I understand that some parts are worked on by programmers who speak only Russian, but the transition to English should prove worth it, especially in the long run.

Regards,
Shikhin

Hi,

I just posted the latest report, with somewhat detail, 3 days ago. However, it's the end of the month, so I thought I'd just pop in here and say that not much has been added since the last report, but the next (probably three days later, at 1 week's time from the last report) report should contain FULL link support.

Regards,
Shikhin

Great, that's exactly the kind of updates I was requesting from the beginning. Good to see you finally got it

Hi,

Good to announce that linking is up and finished, in my 24.patch file. Now, I've got a query -- does ext2_Rewrite and ext2_CreateFolder need to "copy data from input buffer" too? sysfuncs.txt isn't too clear on this -- could somebody please address this ASAP?

Regards,
Shikhin

P.S. @yogev_ezra -- since my account had an influx of money from you, I was hoping I could get some sort of a statement saying "We gave $2250 to Shikhin Sethi, amounting to 130600INR, on <date-you-send-payment>, for the Summer of Code 2013" or something similar, so that I can avoid problems with the tax department?

Hi,

Following my report from yesterday: I've put up 25.patch and 25.img. 25.img is the kolibri.img with the latest kernel build; note that CreateFolder now works too, so have fun with testing it. Rewrite should be easy to do now, but I think it requires Write too, so I'll do those together. I'd love all sort of code reviews, so do look at everything.

Regards,
Shikhin