The cluster and release engineering teams continued to improve
- the structure that supports &os; building, maintenance, and
+ the structures that support &os;'s building, maintenance, and
installability. Projects ran the gamut from security and speed
improvements to virtualization and storage appliances. New
kernel drivers and capabilities were added, while work to make
@@ -137,7 +137,7 @@
Anne Dickison is Marketing Director for the &os; Foundation. +
Anne Dickison is Marketing Director for the FreeBSD Foundation. She will focus on updating and improving the &os; main web site.
@@ -200,18 +200,20 @@ documentation was another major topic. At present, we use DocBook XML for articles and books, and mdoc(7) for man pages. These markup languages are not very welcoming for new users. - There are simpler documentation markup languages like RST, + There are simpler documentation markup languages like + reStructured Text (RST), Markdown, and AsciiDoc that take less time to learn and use. In fact, these markup systems are all similar to each other. These systems tend to be more oriented towards visual appearance rather than the semantic markup of our present - systems, there might be ways to work around that. + systems, although there might be ways to work around that.Following the theme of making contributing easier, we also - discussed giving easier access so users can make additions to - the &os; Wiki. Like any other useful web resource, it was - horribly abused by spammers and access was limited to prevent - that abuse. It is tricky to allow submissions yet keep the + discussed whether access to the &os; Wiki can be more easily + granted, facilitating user contributions. + After the wiki was set up, automated account creation abuse + forced access to be limited. + It is tricky to allow submissions yet keep the quality of submitted information usefully high.
Due to the markup systems used, it is difficult to review
@@ -250,22 +252,23 @@
pkgsrc is a fork of &os; ports from the NetBSD - project with a focus on portability and multi platform +
pkgsrc is a fork of the &os; Ports Collection by + the NetBSD + project with a focus on portability and multi-platform support. At present, pkgsrc supports building packages on 23 different platforms from a single tree, including &os;
While pkgsrc is not a replacement for ports in most - use cases, it holds a unique position in mixed platform - environments where software ideally needs to be the same - version across the board and should built in a consistent + use cases, it holds a unique position in mixed-platform + environments where software needs to be the same + version across all systems and built in a consistent manner, saving the user from having to resort to manually building programs or re-implementing a mechanism to do so.
@@ -276,7 +279,7 @@ quarter).Work is in progress to add - pkgng support to pkgsrc.
+ pkg support to pkgsrc.Expand the effort to -STABLE and -CURRENT branches and, if - possible, architectures other than AMD64. Shell access - welcome (without privilege is sufficient).
+Expand the effort to the -STABLE and -CURRENT branches and, if + possible, architectures other than amd64. Contributing + shell access to such machines would be helpful (an unprivileged + account is sufficient).
More testing needed for the following uses: ZFS with +
More testing is needed for the following use cases: ZFS with GRUB+loader.efi, ZFS with boot1+loader.efi, UFS with - boot1+loader.efi (test modularization of + boot1+loader.efi (to test the modularization of boot1.efi)
Mathieu Arnold (mat@) committed - PR197878, + PR + 197878, updating the Xfce section in the Porter's Handbook.
We also follow the unstable releases (available in our
@@ -404,12 +409,13 @@
Create documentation about usage of
+ Create documentation for the usage of
sysutils/xfce4-power-manager (it needs some love,
- PR199166).
Some hidden features were introduced in the 1.5.1 release, - and as we also support ConsoleKit2 (fork of + and as we also support ConsoleKit2 (a fork of sysutils/consolekit), help for users is required.
@@ -479,7 +485,7 @@It mainly consists of extending tap(4) to provide - the same RSS behaviours with the hardware multiqueue network + the same RSS behaviours as the hardware multiqueue network cards, developing simple test applications using multiqueue tap(4) and socket(2), adding hooks in each layer of the network stack to collect the per-ring per-cpu @@ -601,7 +607,7 @@
The &os; Release Engineering Team is responsible for setting and publishing release schedules for official project releases - of &os;, announcing code freezes and maintaining the + of &os;, announcing code freezes, and maintaining the respective branches, among other things.
The &os; 10.2-RELEASE cycle began in mid-June, with the @@ -615,15 +621,15 @@ third-party hosting providers (aka "cloud" hosting).
-In follow-up with the work done by &a.andrew; to port &os; to - the ARM64 (aarch64) architecture, the Release Engineering +
Following up on the work done by &a.andrew; to port &os; to + the arm64 (aarch64) architecture, the Release Engineering build tools were updated to produce &os;/aarch64 memory stick images and virtual machine images for use with Qemu (emulators/qemu-devel). At present, the Qemu virtual machine images require an external EFI file to boot. Details on how to boot &os;/aarch64 virtual machine images are - available in the &os; development snapshot announcement email - archives linked below.
+ available in the linked &os; development snapshot announcement email + archives.Last quarter, several parts of the build tools were rewritten to allow greater extensibility and granularity, which has @@ -681,7 +687,7 @@ of these people for their support and input, and would like to especially thank &a.kientzle; for his work on Crochet. Without it, we might not have been able to - produce images of the various boards that we are able to + produce images for the various boards that we are able to now.
For more information on what else has changed in &os; since
@@ -702,7 +708,7 @@
PCI Express (PCIe) hot-plug is used on both laptops and
servers to allow peripheral devices to be added or removed
- while the system is running. Laptops commonly include a
+ while the system is running. Laptops commonly include
hot-pluggable PCIe as either an ExpressCard slot or
- Thunderbolt interface. ExpressCard has built in USB support
+ a Thunderbolt interface. ExpressCard has built in USB support
that is already supported by &os;, but ExpressCard PCIe
devices like Gigabit Ethernet adapters and eSATA cards are
only supported when they are present at boot, and removal may
@@ -825,9 +831,9 @@
Make sure that upon suspend, devices are removed so we
- are not fooled if they are replaced while the machine is
- suspended. Make sure that upon suspend, devices are removed so that
+ any hardware changes made while the machine is suspended
+ are correctly handled.
Further developments under consideration include setting up a - FreeBSD.org oauth2 provider and permitting oauth-style Single + FreeBSD.org OAuth 2 provider and permitting OAuth-style Single Sign-On access to most FreeBSD web-based services. Developers and members of the public would additionally be able to use credentials from other providers such as GitHub, Twitter, or @@ -1047,9 +1053,9 @@
The ACPI specication defines CPU Cx states, which are idle states. Methods to enter the state and miscellaneous - information like state leave latency are returned by the _CST + information like the state-leave latency are returned by the _CST ACPI method. To save energy and reduce useless heating, the - operating system enters the Cx state when the CPU has no work + operating system enters a Cx state when the CPU has no work to do. C0 is the non-idle state, while C1, C2, and C3 (defined by ACPI) each represent an idle state with sequentially more energy saving, but also with higher latency @@ -1059,7 +1065,7 @@ the CPU cache and usually requires special chipset programming to correctly handle requests from I/O devices to the CPU. Do not confuse Cx, Px and Sx: Cx states are only meaningful when - the system is in fully operational state S0; Px states are + the system is in the fully operational state S0; Px states are only meaningful when the system is not in the idle state, C0.
@@ -1089,15 +1095,16 @@ the ACPI tables to use MWAIT for entering Cx states. For all Intel CPUs after Core2, the driver contains the description of the Cx mode latencies and quirks, eliminating dependency on - the correct BIOS information, which is often incorrect. The + correct BIOS information, since the BIOS information is often + incorrect. The approach of porting the Linux driver was considered by several people, but all evaluators independently concluded that the project cannot maintain such an approach without direct involvement from Intel.During the work, around 500 lines of identical code between - the i386 and amd64 version of the idle handling were moved to - the common location x86/x86/cpu_machdep.c. Now the + the i386 and amd64 versions of idle handling were moved to + a common location x86/x86/cpu_machdep.c. Now the i386 and amd64 machdep.c files contain only unique machine-dependent routines. This advance depended on John Baldwin's elimination of the unmaintained Xen PVM i386 @@ -1139,7 +1146,7 @@ context identifier, and at context switch time, the operating system instructs the processor which context is becoming active. The feature slightly reduces context switch time by - avoiding TLB flush, and more importantly, reduces the warm-up + avoiding TLB flushes, and more importantly, reduces the warm-up period for a thread after context switch.
&os; already used PCID, but the existing implementation @@ -1150,9 +1157,9 @@ on the context switch. The bitmap was used to direct Inter-Processor Interrupts to the marked CPU when the operating system needed to perform TLB invalidation. The most - important deficiency of the implementation was the increase of + significant deficiency of the old implementation was the increase of TLB invalidation IPIs, since the bitmap could only grow until - full TLB shootdown was performed. It increased the TLB rate, + a full TLB shootdown was performed. It increased the TLB rate, which negated the positive effects of avoiding TLB flushes on large machines. Secondarily, the bitmap maintenance in both the pmap and the context code was quite complicated, leading @@ -1183,7 +1190,7 @@
The rewrite was committed to HEAD at r282684.
-Note: AMD processors do not have PCID feature for host paging +
Note: AMD processors do not have the PCID feature for host paging
(AMD provides ASIDs for SVM use). But it is likely that AMD
processors do cache TLB translations for different address
spaces transparently, and snoop writes to the page tables to
@@ -2136,7 +2143,7 @@
This support was introduced to the public at the &os; 2015
Developer Summit in Ottawa at a demo held by Semihalf and the
- &os; Foundation. Cavium's ThunderX server CRB (Customer
+ FreeBSD Foundation. Cavium's ThunderX server CRB (Customer
Reference Board) is now capable of booting SMP &os; from both
the hard disk and from an NFS root using a PCIe networking
card. The example setup is now available on the &os; test
@@ -2394,7 +2401,7 @@
Foundation members gave these talks: We have committed to sponsoring the upcoming conferences:
+ We have committed to sponsoring several upcoming conferences:
vBSDCon, womENcourage 2015, EuroBSDCon 2015, Grace Hopper
conference, BSDCon Brasil, Cambridge Developer Summit, and
- OpenZFS. You?ll also find us at OSCON, July 21-23, and
+ OpenZFS. You'll also find us at OSCON, July 21-23, and the
SNIA Storage Developer Conference, Sept 21-24. So far, we have raised $361,000 for 2015 from over 500
donors. Juniper became a Gold level donor. We are
- actively approaching commercial &os; users for Silver plus
+ actively approaching commercial &os; users for Silver-plus
donations, and asking large tech companies for separate
women in tech funding, to help us recruit more women to
the &os; Project. We are also asking companies for
@@ -2536,7 +2543,7 @@
busy providing advocacy work for the Project. She helped
provide more &os; marketing literature and material. This
included the cool I Choose &os; sticker and very
- popular I Love FreeBSD tattoos that are available
+ popular I Love FreeBSD temporary tattoos that are available
at conferences. We published April, May, and June
Foundation Newsletters to highlight the work being done by
the Foundation to support &os;. These newsletters also
@@ -2608,7 +2615,7 @@
-
Brad Davis has been working on CMake resulting in an update +
Brad Davis has been working on CMake, resulting in an update to version 3.2.3 being committed to ports.
Overall, we have updated the following ports in this @@ -2927,8 +2934,8 @@ The build process has been fully automated and is more fault tolerant now. More details on this will be available in an upcoming &os; Journal article. About eleven - servers for daily test builds. To make it simpler for - everyone to find the status and results of these builds, the + servers are used for daily test builds. To make it simpler for + everyone to find the status and results of these builds, pkg-status.FreeBSD.org has been developed by Bryan Drewery. Its intent is to show all systems and builds in nearly real-time. It is currently @@ -3030,7 +3037,7 @@
As part of this year's Google Summer of Code, we have been adding support for the _FORTIFY_SOURCE extension to libc. This extension uses the GCC - builtin_object_size to prevent buffer overflows on + builtin_object_size information to prevent buffer overflows in existing code. The compiler and the C library can effectively detect a set of common programming mistakes.