DiscoBSD 2.3 released: August 11, 2024

[chettrick]

--- DiscoBSD 2.3 RELEASED ---

DiscoBSD 2.3 Released

August 11, 2024

DiscoBSD 2.3 is released.

This is the fourth official release of DiscoBSD, the multi-platform
2.11BSD-based Unix-like operating system for microcontrollers.

DiscoBSD 2.3 offers ports to two different microcontroller platforms:

• DiscoBSD/stm32 - STM32F4 family of 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4
  microcontrollers from STMicroelectronics
• DiscoBSD/pic32 - PIC32MX7 family of 32-bit MIPS32 M4K
  microcontrollers from Microchip

DiscoBSD/stm32, unique only to DiscoBSD, offers a familiar BSD
environment on the many available STM32F4 development boards.

DiscoBSD/pic32, inherited from RetroBSD, offers a familiar BSD
environment on the many available PIC32MX7 development boards,
as well as full use with the included VirtualMIPS PIC32 simulator.

A nearly-complete development environment is included in DiscoBSD.

There are: various text editors and compilers, a MIPS assembler and
MIPS linker, and many more programming languages in addition to C
and asm, such as Scheme, BASIC, Forth, RetroForth, lex, yacc, and TCL.
Examples are provided in the file system at /usr/share/examples.

As a descendant of 2.11BSD, DiscoBSD inherits its strong BSD heritage.
The userland is powerful, full-featured, and comfortable to competent
UNIX users, as it is derived from the rich 4.3BSD-Tahoe userland, modern
implementations of classic utilities, and improvements along the way.

Install, build, and debug instructions can be found in the README files.

Significant Changes and Improvements

New Features in this Release

• Make targets for distribution and release.
• Support for the WeAct Studio STM32F412RET6 Core board.
• Support for the WeAct Studio STM32F405RGT6 Core board.
• Imported the LL Cortex driver from STM32CubeF4.
• Imported strlcpy(3), strlcat(3), basename(3), and dirname(3).

Filesystem

• Cleanup of C include headers.
• Added libgen.h C include header for strlcpy(3), strlcat(3).

Build System

Continuing the overhaul of the source tree and build system.

• Both BSD make and GNU make are fully supported.
• FreeBSD's version of make requires MAKESYSPATH set.
• OSRev variable in share/mk/sys.mk for release naming.
• RELEASEDIR variable is default distrib/obj/releasedir.
• Release tar and zip archives generated in RELEASEDIR.
• Linux uses libbsd-dev and pkg-config variables in tools.

Kernel

• Import sys/syslimits.h header from OpenBSD.
• Define PATH_MAX, to eventually replace MAXPATHLEN.

DiscoBSD/stm32 Specific Improvements

• Add optional SDIO_XFER_CLK_DIV Config for SDIO clock.
• Explicit IDs and chip revisions in cpuidentify().
• Support for WeAct Studio STM32F412RET6 Core board.
• Support for WeAct Studio STM32F405RGT6 Core board.

DiscoBSD/pic32 Specific Improvements

• VirtualMIPS SD card size increased to 512MB.

Bugfixes and Corrections

• Normalize formatting of .TH dates in man(7) manuals.
• Clean up all DOS line endings with Unix line endings.
• Many strcpy(3) -> strlcpy(3), strcat(3) -> strlcat(3), and
  sprintf(3) -> snprintf(3) conversions.
• Steady improvements and corrections in documentation.
• Steady improvements and corrections in libraries.
• Manual page fixes and improvements.

Host Development Environment

While DiscoBSD is primarily developed and tested on OpenBSD,
Linux and FreeBSD are also supported as host environments.

These host development environments have been tested:

OpenBSD 7.3

• Host compiler Clang 13.0.0
• BSD make and GNU make
• DiscoBSD/stm32
  • arm-none-eabi-gcc 7.4.1
• DiscoBSD/pic32
  • Custom port of mips-elf-gcc 4.8.1

OpenBSD 6.8

• Host compiler GCC 4.2.1
• Host compiler GCC 8.4.0
• Host compiler Clang 10.0.1
• BSD make and GNU make
• DiscoBSD/stm32
  • arm-none-eabi-gcc 7.4.1
• DiscoBSD/pic32
  • Custom port of mips-elf-gcc 4.8.1

Ubuntu 23.04

• Host compiler GCC 12.3.0
• Host compiler Clang 15.0.7
• BSD make and GNU make
• DiscoBSD/stm32
  • arm-none-eabi-gcc 12.2.1
  • arm-none-eabi-gcc 10.3
• DiscoBSD/pic32
  • Untested

Ubuntu 18.04

• Host compiler GCC 9.2.1
• BSD make and GNU make
• DiscoBSD/stm32
  • arm-none-eabi-gcc 7.3.1
• DiscoBSD/pic32
  • Custom compilation of mips-elf-gcc 4.8.1

FreeBSD 13.2

• Host compiler Clang 14.0.5
• BSD make (with MAKESYSPATH set) and GNU make
• DiscoBSD/stm32
  • arm-none-eabi-gcc 10.3.1
• DiscoBSD/pic32
  • Untested

Developers and Contributors this Release

• @chettrick
• @extrowerk

Full Changelog

DISCOBSD_2_2...DISCOBSD_2_3

---

This discussion was created from the release DiscoBSD 2.3 released: August 11, 2024.

[extrowerk]

Just for clarification: I haven't actually contributed anything other than my wishes for the WeAct board platform support, all the hard work was done by @chettrick .