Re: [Torsion-dev] Torsion 0.0.18 released

[Geoffrey Plitt]

Dan,

Congrats on the release. Looking forward to checking it out. Let me
know if there are any more easily-chunked tasks I can do, and I may be
up for more algorithmical or research-based stuff. I liked the
checkpoint optimisation, smart stuff.

Geoff


On Mon, 06 Dec 2004 20:34:26 -0800, Dan Helfman <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> 
> Here's the changelog:
> 
> torsion 0.0.18 (Mon, 06 Dec 2004 09:15:04 -0800)
>    * switched to a new faster checkpointer
>    * wrote a keyboard driver
>    * added a very basic command shell
>    * implemented a unit test framework
> 
> Firstly, thanks are due to Travis Geiselbrecht for general help, Lee
> Salzman for debugging wizardy, and Geoffrey Plitt for work on the shell
> and some good discussions.
> 
> The biggest change in this release is also the change that is probably
> least visible to any potential user: a fairly large overhaul of the
> memory checkpointer. Specifically, the mechanism by which dirty pages
> are gathered used to involve taking out a global lock and then spidering
> through the page tables on every checkpoint. Lee pointed out that a much
> better approach would be to make all persistent virtual pages start out
> as copy-on-write, and then trap any page write faults to determine which
> pages are dirtied between each checkpoint. I finally got around to
> implementing this method for the 0.0.18 release, and, after more than a
> bit of debugging, it turned out to work quite well.
> 
> The keyboard driver and basic shell allow the user to enter very simple
> commands to get the status of various Torsion sub-systems. I currently
> use the shell as more of a debugging and diagnostic tool than anything,
> a temporary solution to be eventually replaced with a real shell,
> perhaps some sort of real programming language.
> 
> The unit test framework is also very simple, but could be used to write
> some very real unit and functional tests, which Torsion needs especially
> at this point in its development.
> 
> Anyway, those are the highlights. In the effort to update the
> checkpointer, many other sub-systems were modified and improved, but
> apparently nothing noteworthy enough to make the release notes.
> 
> As for the future? Well, in the near term, Torsion could do with truly
> persistent tasks, which have been on the to-do list for a while now.
> Persistent tasks would allow you to fire up some application (say, a
> game or text editor), and then reboot, only to continue exactly where
> you left off in that particular task.
> 
> Additionally, William Rubel has generously offered some of his expertise
> in working on Torsion's documentation, which I've really got to take him
> up on now that 0.0.18 is out the door.
> 
> And as always, I encourage anyone with questions, ideas, or comments to
> post on the torsion-dev mailing list.
> 
> --
> Dan Helfman <address@hidden>
> http://torsion.org/
> 
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