asterinas/RELEASES.md

Version 0.16.0 (2025-08-04)

This release introduces initial support for the LoongArch CPU architecture, a major milestone for the project. Version 0.16.0 also significantly expands our Linux ABI compatibility with the addition of nine new system calls such as memfd_create and pidfd_open.

Key enhancements include expanded functionality for UNIX sockets (file descriptor passing and the SOCK_SEQPACKET socket type), partial support for netlink sockets of the NETLINK_KOBJECT_UEVENT type, the initial implementation of CgroupFS, and a major testing improvement with the integration of system call tests from the Linux Test Project (LTP). We've also adopted Nix for building the initramfs, streamlining our cross-compilation and testing workflow.

Asterinas Kernel

We have made the following key changes to the Asterinas kernel:

• New system calls or features:
  • Memory:
    • Add the mremap system call
    • Add the msync system call based on an inefficient implementation
    • Add the memfd_create system call
  • Processes and IPC:
    • Add the pidfd_open system call along with the CLONE_PIDFD flag
  • File systems and I/O in general:
    • Add the close_range system call
    • Add the fadvise64 system call (dummy implementation)
    • Add the ioprio_get and ioprio_set system calls (dummy implementation)
    • Add the epoll_pwait2 system call
• Enhanced system calls or features:
  • Processes:
    • Add FUTEX_WAKE_OP support for the futex system call
    • Add WSTOPPED and WCONTINUED support to the wait4 and waitpid system calls
    • Add more fields in /proc/*/stat and /proc/*/status
  • File systems and I/O in general:
    • Add a few more features for the statx system call
    • Fix partial writes and reads in writev and readv
    • Introduce FsType and FsRegistry
  • Sockets and network:
    • Enable UNIX sockets to send and receive file descriptors
    • Support SO_PASSCRED & SCM_CREDENTIALS & SOCK_SEQPACKET for UNIX sockets
    • Add NETLINK_KOBJECT_UEVENT support for netlink sockets (a partial implementation)
    • Support some missing socket options for UNIX stream sockets
    • Truncate netlink messages when the user-space buffer is full
    • Fix the networking address reusing behavior (SO_REUSEADDR)
  • Security:
    • Add basic cgroupfs implementation
• New device support:
  • Add basic i8042 keyboard support
• Enhanced device support:
  • TTY
    • Refactor the TTY abstraction to support multiple I/O devices correctly
    • Enhance the framebuffer console to support ANSI escape sequences
• Test infrastructure:
  • Introduce the system call tests from LTP
  • Use Nix to build initramfs

OSTD & OSDK

We have made the following key changes to OSTD:

• CPU architectures:
  • x86-64:
    • Refactor floating-point context management in context switching and signal handling
    • Use iret instead of sysret if the context is not clean
    • Don't treat APIC IDs as CPU IDs
    • Fix some CPUID problems and add support for AMD CPUs
  • RISC-V:
    • Add RISC-V timer support
    • Parse device tree for RISC-V ISA extensions
  • LoongArch:
    • Add the initial LoongArch support
• CPU:
  • Add support for dynamically‌-allocated CPU-local objects
  • Require T: Send for CpuLocal<T, S>
• Memory management:
  • Adopt a two-phase locking scheme for page tables
• Trap handling:
  • Create IrqChip abstraction
• Task and scheduling:
  • Rewrite the Rust doc of OSTD's scheduling module
  • Fix the race between enabling IRQs and halting CPU
• Test infrastructure:
  • Add CI to check documentation and publish API documentation to a self-host website

We have made the following key changes to OSDK:

• Add OSDK's code coverage feature
• Support cargo osdk test for RISC-V

Before 0.16.0

Release notes were not kept for versions prior to 0.16.0.