29 ms·

Fuchsia Developers Website

205 points by chenzhekl 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
_nhynes 7y ago
It doesn't seem to work in Chromium.
- jasonvorhe 7y ago
  What isn't working for you? I'm not having any issues in chrome.
  - snvzz 7y ago
    List on the left column behaves well if scrolled via scrollbar. It goes nuts when trying to use the entries at the bottom if scrolled with mouse wheel.
    - drusepth 7y ago
      There's another comment or two saying the scrolling is acting weird when they have javascript turned off. Perhaps that's it?
      - snvzz 7y ago
        JS is on, so no. Maybe they think it has to do with javascript, and it does not for them either. This is chromium on Linux.
        drusepth 7y ago
        For the record, I'm also on Chromium on Linux (Ubuntu w/ awesomewm) and scrolling works for me. Weird.
        snvzz 7y ago
        Arch w/i3.
sim_card_map 7y ago
Kernel written in C++... The horror.
- snvzz 7y ago
  Do you care to elaborate? I see no issue in using a fair subset of C++ features in privileged mode.
  - DSingularity 7y ago
    I think most opponents of C++ for OS kernel development take their position because the simplicity of C results allows for pretty straightforward and direct reasoning about the static (asm, obj layout) and dynamic properties (memory allocations, procedure invocation, etc) of their code. Both C++ and our tooling has come a long way — not to mention a change in the nature of the challenges of kernel development/performance. I think most of the old arguments against C++ have lost their edge.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Though it is fun to rag on C++ every now and again, I believe Google's C++ style guide is a subset of features (classes, no exceptions, subset of boost,..). Most C++ issues come from using every feature under the sun and accumulating loads of technical debt instead of picking one tool and sticking with it.
  - PyroLagus 7y ago
    > Though it is fun to rag on C++ every now and again, I believe Google's C++ style guide is a subset of features (classes, no exceptions, subset of boost,..). Which is the same thing Genode does[1], and it has served them well. Maybe a different language like ADA/SPARK or something else would have been better, but C++ was what they're familiar with, so they made it work. Although I like Rust, it's a bad argument here. Rust has been changing a lot and is still changing, and Fuchsia wasn't started yesterday. And with C++, you could even replace critical parts with formally verified LEAN[1], which has C++ code generation and should be even safer than Rust. [0] https://genodians.org/nfeske/2019-01-22-conscious-c++ https://genodians.org/nfeske/2019-01-22-conscious-c++ [1] https://leanprover.github.io/ https://leanprover.github.io/
zaro 7y ago
> Documentation for developing for the open source operating system. Is fuchsia Android style open source or a true OSS?
- pmarin 7y ago
  What do you mean by true OSS?
  - Un1corn 7y ago
    Android is more of an open core project. AOSP is technically fully open source but when people say Android they mean the Android version of Google with the play store and play services. The naming is confusing because what people call Android is not actually Android like what people call Linux is not actually Linux but a distribution.
  - ChrisSD 7y ago
    Even with ASOP it tends to be more of a code dump than an open source development process. If you're an OEM you get to see it earlier in development (and get to dump your own OEM patches in there) but for most people the actual development is done behind closed doors.
- IshKebab 7y ago
  Android style is true open source. I presume you mean "is Google going to work closely with non-Googlers to develop it" and I doubt it.
  - gorio 7y ago
    I think it is more if they will encourage any use outside of the control of Google. Or if they, like with Android where they illegally obstructed companies from doing so, will even discourage it.
    - MayeulC 7y ago
      That, plus they actively deprecated open source part in favor of their closed-source alternatives, and basically made the Android operating system useless (especially with regards to compatibility with the android SDK) without their closed-source parts. So, it is technically "Open Source", but I am not sure I would call it "Free software" in the spirit. Especially the permissive license, which gives developers free reign over their forks. I really like being able to get kernel sources from various phone vendors, and that's what enables projects such as postmarketos or lineage (though lineage is less concerned about getting the kernel sources/upstreaming, it seems). I just wish there was an anti-tivoization clause in the Linux kernel license.
davesmith1983 7y ago
The code of conduct is like the first thing on the 'documentation'. If this becomes interesting and I can fork the code I will, otherwise I doubt I will be interested. EDIT: looks like I can. I will be forking it.
the_duke 7y ago
It will be very interesting to watch how Fuchsia evolves over the next couple of years. Especially what Google has planned for it. It might be a small moonshot experiment to see if they can come with a sensible, modern OS. It might also be the designated successor for Android/Chrome OS, and the future of the Google ecosystem. Conceptually, Fuchsia is interesting. It's built on a microkernel (Zirkon) and a capabilities based system. Drivers are isolated elf binaries with a stable ABI, other normally privileged things like file systems are also isolated services. On one hand, I find it promising as a application platform, both for mobile devices and desktops: while Linux sandboxing capabilities are evolving (cgroups , namespaces, ...) , very little of the ecosystem is built around isolation as a primary concept, leading to all kinds of half-baked sandboxing and permission solutions: chroot, Flatpack, firejail, SELinux, (Docker, mentioned hesitantly since it's mainly for server environments)... All of which are somewhat tacked on an hard to use properly. So a clean sheet design might be the best viable (practical) path. On the other hand: * this throws away decades of work on Linux * many drivers will be closed source; open drivers are a major achievement of Linux * Linux is a very collaborative effort with many stakeholders, while Google is known for keeping a very firm grip on their projects Curios to hear other thoughts on this.
- sascha_sl 7y ago
  Read NAMESPACES(7) The Linux kernel itself has a unified sandboxing API, there are just a lot of clients using different parts of it. And that's pretty nice, being able to pick what you need when developing an OS conceptually just barely above the kernel. Cgroups is more of a resource constraining API, I wouldn't call it the exact same concern as sandboxing. http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/namespaces.7.html http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/namespaces.7.html
  - the_duke 7y ago
    I mentioned namespaces. The point I was trying to make: while you can build sandboxing solutions based on Linux, the entire ecosystem has evolved without sandboxing as a first class concept, leading to numerous half-baked, half-adopted solutions that are all quite cumbersome from a user perspective. A new OS with sandboxing by default would probably produce a applicaton ecosystem that is more secure. Also, isolating many normally privileged facilities (like drivers, file systems, ...) is not something that is reasonable on Linux.
madprops 7y ago
The first part of the documentation being the code of conduct is a ... fuchsia flag
- shereadsthenews 7y ago
  The code of conduct is the #3 and #4 point of the Linux developer documentation. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/index.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/index.html
childintime 7y ago
I find the Fuchsia Interface Description Language (FIDL) interesting as a concept. It allows components written in different languages to easily cooperate: - Language: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/languages/fidl/reference/language.md https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/languages/fidl/r... - Wire-format: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/languages/fidl/reference/wire-format https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/languages/fidl/r... I think it is an underappreciated concept in today's systems, which suffer an epidemic of monolithism, leading to GB-sized installations that do their own variation of.. nothing much.
- sansnomme 7y ago
  For some reason Fuchsia has always reminded me of Windows. Or at least what Windows would have been had it been built from a clean slate in 2019. The handles etc. have clear Windows analogues and Wire is basically COM.
  - dodobirdlord 7y ago
    The wire format seems strongly related to protocol buffers, which is to be expected from a Google project.
    - ithkuil 7y ago
      At Google it's not uncommon to have common code "libraries" actually being separate process exposing a stubby rpc interface (similar to gRPC) over shared memory IPC. It solved several inter-language issues that plagued things like swig and counterintuitively it can also be as fast of even faster than direct cross-language integration.
  - loeg 7y ago
    That's probably not a mistake. NT has some really solid design concepts that POSIX missed on.
    - brachi 7y ago
black_puppydog 7y ago
The website refuses to scroll without javascript. WTF?
moneywoes 7y ago
Is it confirmed that Fuchsia will be heavily involved with Flutter?
- pier25 7y ago
  By default GUI apps for Fuchsia will be written in Dart with Flutter SDK. Fuchsia also supports C++ so I imagine you will be able to use Qt et al.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Now they have a scene manager that is UI framework agnostic. https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/HEAD/docs/the-book/ui/scenic.md https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/HEAD/docs/the-boo... And ART is being ported to run on Fuchsia. https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+Fuchsia https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+Fuchsi... So it remains to be seen.
- mikece 7y ago
  I thought the only thing that had been confirmed about Fuchsia is that apps for it will be written in Flutter. Aside from that I've wondered if maybe it was Google's version of Microsoft's Midori project which was a microkernel operating system written in C# from which many lessons learns have been implemented in what we know today as Windows 10. Or it could be a plan to abandon Android in order to avoid Oracle's Java API lawsuits.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    It would have been cheaper to buy Sun instead of hoping that no one would pick it up.
elamje 7y ago
I am curious if anyone knows if Google is going to bake analytics into the OS, like Android? Will it be data collection free, and just push users to use Google services as the default, or will it have data collection baked in?
- dodobirdlord 7y ago
  Well, it's open source and build on the idea of interoperable components. So while Google may package data collection components it would be straightforward to build a version without them from source.
  - rahkiin 7y ago
    Whether you are able to put it on your phone in a working state is then the question though. You would need drivers for all parts which might be closed source and not compatible with your build.
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      Hopefully there's a stable driver ABI, or at least an ability to use multiple versions, so you're able to use these blobs however you want. Sad state of affairs is firmware.
remir 7y ago
Story A user-facing logical container encapsulating human activity, satisfied by one or more related modules. Stories allow users to organize activities in ways they find natural, without developers having to imagine all those ways ahead of time. Interesting. Does it mean that medules are able to declare their capabilities and the system then draws the UI around what the user wants to achieve? For example, let's say I want to order pizza. Instead of having to download Domino's app, the system create a story based on the action of ordering pizza with all the relevant module that allows me to order said pizza. Not sure if I understand that correctly.
ori_b 7y ago
The APIs look painfully overcomplicated.
ThinkBeat 7y ago
I am excited for any attempt at innovation in the operating system department. It is too early to tell how Fuchsia will do but at least they are trying. I think https://www.qubes-os.org https://www.qubes-os.org is interesting as well. Unfortunately almost every attempt to get a new OS out there has failed in one way or another. (as far as user adoptation). There are some pretty nifty things out there. I hope to the higher powers that Linux, UNIX or WindowsNT is not the end of the line. I think it was a very exciting time when you had Atari ST, Amiga, BeOS, NeXT, Solaris etc competing. I fear monoculture is most things. Browsers, operating systems, politis.
- archgoon 7y ago
  What features do you feel that Linux is lacking (or could be improved if you were willing to start from scratch and say to heck with backwards compatiblity)?
fopen64 7y ago
This won't get anywhere, I bet money on this.
sergius 7y ago
Why not Minix 3? https://www.minix3.org/ https://www.minix3.org/ Heck, while we are dreaming: Why not buy the rights to Plan 9 and start improving on those ideas, now that would be interesting.

205 points by chenzhekl 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

_nhynes 7y ago

It doesn't seem to work in Chromium.

jasonvorhe 7y ago
What isn't working for you? I'm not having any issues in chrome.
- snvzz 7y ago
  List on the left column behaves well if scrolled via scrollbar. It goes nuts when trying to use the entries at the bottom if scrolled with mouse wheel.
  - drusepth 7y ago
    There's another comment or two saying the scrolling is acting weird when they have javascript turned off. Perhaps that's it?
    - snvzz 7y ago
      JS is on, so no. Maybe they think it has to do with javascript, and it does not for them either. This is chromium on Linux.
      - drusepth 7y ago
        For the record, I'm also on Chromium on Linux (Ubuntu w/ awesomewm) and scrolling works for me. Weird.
        snvzz 7y ago
        Arch w/i3.

sim_card_map 7y ago

Kernel written in C++... The horror.

snvzz 7y ago
Do you care to elaborate? I see no issue in using a fair subset of C++ features in privileged mode.
- DSingularity 7y ago
  I think most opponents of C++ for OS kernel development take their position because the simplicity of C results allows for pretty straightforward and direct reasoning about the static (asm, obj layout) and dynamic properties (memory allocations, procedure invocation, etc) of their code. Both C++ and our tooling has come a long way — not to mention a change in the nature of the challenges of kernel development/performance. I think most of the old arguments against C++ have lost their edge.
cameronbrown 7y ago
Though it is fun to rag on C++ every now and again, I believe Google's C++ style guide is a subset of features (classes, no exceptions, subset of boost,..). Most C++ issues come from using every feature under the sun and accumulating loads of technical debt instead of picking one tool and sticking with it.
- PyroLagus 7y ago
  > Though it is fun to rag on C++ every now and again, I believe Google's C++ style guide is a subset of features (classes, no exceptions, subset of boost,..). Which is the same thing Genode does[1], and it has served them well. Maybe a different language like ADA/SPARK or something else would have been better, but C++ was what they're familiar with, so they made it work. Although I like Rust, it's a bad argument here. Rust has been changing a lot and is still changing, and Fuchsia wasn't started yesterday. And with C++, you could even replace critical parts with formally verified LEAN[1], which has C++ code generation and should be even safer than Rust. [0] https://genodians.org/nfeske/2019-01-22-conscious-c++ https://genodians.org/nfeske/2019-01-22-conscious-c++ [1] https://leanprover.github.io/ https://leanprover.github.io/

zaro 7y ago

> Documentation for developing for the open source operating system. Is fuchsia Android style open source or a true OSS?

pmarin 7y ago
What do you mean by true OSS?
- Un1corn 7y ago
  Android is more of an open core project. AOSP is technically fully open source but when people say Android they mean the Android version of Google with the play store and play services. The naming is confusing because what people call Android is not actually Android like what people call Linux is not actually Linux but a distribution.
- ChrisSD 7y ago
  Even with ASOP it tends to be more of a code dump than an open source development process. If you're an OEM you get to see it earlier in development (and get to dump your own OEM patches in there) but for most people the actual development is done behind closed doors.
IshKebab 7y ago
Android style is true open source. I presume you mean "is Google going to work closely with non-Googlers to develop it" and I doubt it.
- gorio 7y ago
  I think it is more if they will encourage any use outside of the control of Google. Or if they, like with Android where they illegally obstructed companies from doing so, will even discourage it.
  - MayeulC 7y ago
    That, plus they actively deprecated open source part in favor of their closed-source alternatives, and basically made the Android operating system useless (especially with regards to compatibility with the android SDK) without their closed-source parts. So, it is technically "Open Source", but I am not sure I would call it "Free software" in the spirit. Especially the permissive license, which gives developers free reign over their forks. I really like being able to get kernel sources from various phone vendors, and that's what enables projects such as postmarketos or lineage (though lineage is less concerned about getting the kernel sources/upstreaming, it seems). I just wish there was an anti-tivoization clause in the Linux kernel license.

davesmith1983 7y ago

The code of conduct is like the first thing on the 'documentation'. If this becomes interesting and I can fork the code I will, otherwise I doubt I will be interested. EDIT: looks like I can. I will be forking it.

the_duke 7y ago

It will be very interesting to watch how Fuchsia evolves over the next couple of years. Especially what Google has planned for it. It might be a small moonshot experiment to see if they can come with a sensible, modern OS. It might also be the designated successor for Android/Chrome OS, and the future of the Google ecosystem. Conceptually, Fuchsia is interesting. It's built on a microkernel (Zirkon) and a capabilities based system. Drivers are isolated elf binaries with a stable ABI, other normally privileged things like file systems are also isolated services. On one hand, I find it promising as a application platform, both for mobile devices and desktops: while Linux sandboxing capabilities are evolving (cgroups , namespaces, ...) , very little of the ecosystem is built around isolation as a primary concept, leading to all kinds of half-baked sandboxing and permission solutions: chroot, Flatpack, firejail, SELinux, (Docker, mentioned hesitantly since it's mainly for server environments)... All of which are somewhat tacked on an hard to use properly. So a clean sheet design might be the best viable (practical) path. On the other hand: * this throws away decades of work on Linux * many drivers will be closed source; open drivers are a major achievement of Linux * Linux is a very collaborative effort with many stakeholders, while Google is known for keeping a very firm grip on their projects Curios to hear other thoughts on this.

sascha_sl 7y ago
Read NAMESPACES(7) The Linux kernel itself has a unified sandboxing API, there are just a lot of clients using different parts of it. And that's pretty nice, being able to pick what you need when developing an OS conceptually just barely above the kernel. Cgroups is more of a resource constraining API, I wouldn't call it the exact same concern as sandboxing. http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/namespaces.7.html http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/namespaces.7.html
- the_duke 7y ago
  I mentioned namespaces. The point I was trying to make: while you can build sandboxing solutions based on Linux, the entire ecosystem has evolved without sandboxing as a first class concept, leading to numerous half-baked, half-adopted solutions that are all quite cumbersome from a user perspective. A new OS with sandboxing by default would probably produce a applicaton ecosystem that is more secure. Also, isolating many normally privileged facilities (like drivers, file systems, ...) is not something that is reasonable on Linux.

madprops 7y ago

The first part of the documentation being the code of conduct is a ... fuchsia flag

shereadsthenews 7y ago
The code of conduct is the #3 and #4 point of the Linux developer documentation. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/index.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/index.html

childintime 7y ago

I find the Fuchsia Interface Description Language (FIDL) interesting as a concept. It allows components written in different languages to easily cooperate: - Language: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/languages/fidl/reference/language.md https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/languages/fidl/r... - Wire-format: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/languages/fidl/reference/wire-format https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/languages/fidl/r... I think it is an underappreciated concept in today's systems, which suffer an epidemic of monolithism, leading to GB-sized installations that do their own variation of.. nothing much.

sansnomme 7y ago
For some reason Fuchsia has always reminded me of Windows. Or at least what Windows would have been had it been built from a clean slate in 2019. The handles etc. have clear Windows analogues and Wire is basically COM.
- dodobirdlord 7y ago
  The wire format seems strongly related to protocol buffers, which is to be expected from a Google project.
  - ithkuil 7y ago
    At Google it's not uncommon to have common code "libraries" actually being separate process exposing a stubby rpc interface (similar to gRPC) over shared memory IPC. It solved several inter-language issues that plagued things like swig and counterintuitively it can also be as fast of even faster than direct cross-language integration.
- loeg 7y ago
  That's probably not a mistake. NT has some really solid design concepts that POSIX missed on.
  - brachi 7y ago

black_puppydog 7y ago

The website refuses to scroll without javascript. WTF?

moneywoes 7y ago

Is it confirmed that Fuchsia will be heavily involved with Flutter?

pier25 7y ago
By default GUI apps for Fuchsia will be written in Dart with Flutter SDK. Fuchsia also supports C++ so I imagine you will be able to use Qt et al.
pjmlp 7y ago
Now they have a scene manager that is UI framework agnostic. https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/HEAD/docs/the-book/ui/scenic.md https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/HEAD/docs/the-boo... And ART is being ported to run on Fuchsia. https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+Fuchsia https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+Fuchsi... So it remains to be seen.
mikece 7y ago
I thought the only thing that had been confirmed about Fuchsia is that apps for it will be written in Flutter. Aside from that I've wondered if maybe it was Google's version of Microsoft's Midori project which was a microkernel operating system written in C# from which many lessons learns have been implemented in what we know today as Windows 10. Or it could be a plan to abandon Android in order to avoid Oracle's Java API lawsuits.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  It would have been cheaper to buy Sun instead of hoping that no one would pick it up.

elamje 7y ago

I am curious if anyone knows if Google is going to bake analytics into the OS, like Android? Will it be data collection free, and just push users to use Google services as the default, or will it have data collection baked in?

dodobirdlord 7y ago
Well, it's open source and build on the idea of interoperable components. So while Google may package data collection components it would be straightforward to build a version without them from source.
- rahkiin 7y ago
  Whether you are able to put it on your phone in a working state is then the question though. You would need drivers for all parts which might be closed source and not compatible with your build.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Hopefully there's a stable driver ABI, or at least an ability to use multiple versions, so you're able to use these blobs however you want. Sad state of affairs is firmware.

remir 7y ago

Story A user-facing logical container encapsulating human activity, satisfied by one or more related modules. Stories allow users to organize activities in ways they find natural, without developers having to imagine all those ways ahead of time. Interesting. Does it mean that medules are able to declare their capabilities and the system then draws the UI around what the user wants to achieve? For example, let's say I want to order pizza. Instead of having to download Domino's app, the system create a story based on the action of ordering pizza with all the relevant module that allows me to order said pizza. Not sure if I understand that correctly.

ori_b 7y ago

The APIs look painfully overcomplicated.

ThinkBeat 7y ago

I am excited for any attempt at innovation in the operating system department. It is too early to tell how Fuchsia will do but at least they are trying. I think https://www.qubes-os.org https://www.qubes-os.org is interesting as well. Unfortunately almost every attempt to get a new OS out there has failed in one way or another. (as far as user adoptation). There are some pretty nifty things out there. I hope to the higher powers that Linux, UNIX or WindowsNT is not the end of the line. I think it was a very exciting time when you had Atari ST, Amiga, BeOS, NeXT, Solaris etc competing. I fear monoculture is most things. Browsers, operating systems, politis.

archgoon 7y ago
What features do you feel that Linux is lacking (or could be improved if you were willing to start from scratch and say to heck with backwards compatiblity)?

fopen64 7y ago

This won't get anywhere, I bet money on this.

sergius 7y ago

Why not Minix 3? https://www.minix3.org/ https://www.minix3.org/ Heck, while we are dreaming: Why not buy the rights to Plan 9 and start improving on those ideas, now that would be interesting.