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DiscoBSD 2.4 released: February 11, 2025

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@chettrick chettrick released this 12 Feb 02:11
DISCOBSD_2_4
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--- DiscoBSD 2.4 RELEASED ---

DiscoBSD 2.4 Released

February 11, 2025

DiscoBSD 2.4 is released.

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

The release of DiscoBSD 2.4 marks the 33rd anniversary of 2.11BSD.

DiscoBSD 2.4 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

  • Update host cross compilers to GCC 12.2.0 for stm32 and pic32.
  • Updated single-precision floating-point library to 7.0.1 from LLVM.
  • Imported double-precision floating-point library 7.0.1 from LLVM.
  • Handle mips-elf-gcc dropping -fshort-double throughout tree.
  • Imported, updated, and enabled 2.11BSD install(1).
  • K&R to ANSI updates.
  • Major overhaul to OpenBSD host tools and custom ports.
  • Clarity and improvements in documentation.
  • Windows instructions for installing releases and firmware.

Filesystem

  • Cleanup of C include headers.
  • Addition of int64_t, uint64_t, and min-width macros to stdint.h.
  • Added stdbool.h C include header from OpenBSD.
  • Machine dependent _float.h headers.

Build System

Continuing the overhaul of the build system.

  • Updated to OpenBSD 7.6 as main host development environment.
  • K&R to ANSI updates for all host-built utilities.
  • Length-bound string functions for all host-built utilities.
  • Both BSD make and GNU make are fully supported.
  • FreeBSD's version of BSD make requires MAKESYSPATH set.
  • Linux uses libbsd-dev via pkg-config throughout source tree.
  • Handle linker warning --no-warn-rwx-segments for all hosts.
  • Fixed all OpenBSD-specific linker warnings for unsafe functions.

DiscoBSD/stm32 Specific Improvements

  • Kernels available in Intel HEX .hex and binary .bin formats.
  • MD _float.h header properly handles doubles and long doubles.

DiscoBSD/pic32 Specific Improvements

  • Migrated from 32-bit short-doubles to 64-bit doubles.
  • Imported and updated LLVM floating-point library,
    which enabled the removal of -fshort-double in GCC.
  • Double floats enabled migration to GCC 12.2.0 from 4.8.1.
  • MD _float.h header properly handles doubles and long doubles.

Bugfixes and Corrections

  • Use host system's strmode(3) in tools ar(1); fixes type conflict.
  • 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 7.6

  • Host compiler Clang 16.0.6
  • Host compiler GCC 11.2.0
  • Host compiler Clang 17.0.6
  • BSD make and GNU make
  • DiscoBSD/stm32
    • Custom port of arm-none-eabi-gcc 12.2.0 (rmprofile)
  • DiscoBSD/pic32
    • Custom port of mips-elf-gcc 12.2.0

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
  • DiscoBSD/pic32
    • Untested

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 (gcc-arm-embedded)
  • DiscoBSD/pic32
    • Untested

Release Build Environment

DiscoBSD distribution releases are cross-built on OpenBSD.
The release build environment is configured as below:

OpenBSD 7.6

  • Host compiler Clang 16.0.6
  • BSD make
  • DiscoBSD/stm32
    • Custom port of arm-none-eabi-gcc 12.2.0 (rmprofile)
  • DiscoBSD/pic32
    • Custom port of mips-elf-gcc 12.2.0

Developers and Contributors this Release

Full Changelog

DISCOBSD_2_3...DISCOBSD_2_4

Release Correction - February 24, 2025

The DiscoBSD/stm32 release in DiscoBSD_2_4_stm32.tar.gz
and DiscoBSD_2_4_stm32.zip was incorrectly built with
arm-none-eabi-gcc 12.2.0 without multilib support.

The updated DiscoBSD/stm32 release in DiscoBSD_2_4_stm32p0.tar.gz
and DiscoBSD_2_4_stm32p0.zip was correctly built with
arm-none-eabi-gcc 12.2.0 with multilib support.

It is recommended to use the updated DiscoBSD/stm32 release.

The DiscoBSD/pic32 release is unaffected.

Contributors

chettrick
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