Redox gets more Linux utilities, changes resource path format, and more

The Redox project has published an overview of the progress made in January, and it's a long list. Redox now supports the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, a few of System76's Cosmic Desktop applications now run on Redox, several more Linux applications haven been ported (most notably for me, nano, my CLI text editor of choice), and much more.

The most important change is an overhaul of how Redox handles resource paths:

Redox has a microkernel core, with drivers and other resource providers running as tasks and providing schemes". A scheme is the name of a resource provider, and until now, resources have been accessed using URI/URL format. For example, files would be accessed as file:path/to/my_file, and a TCP connection would be accessed as tcp:127.0.0.1. This format, while forward-looking, has not been very backwards-compatible.

In order to simplify our efforts to port Linux software to Redox, we have decided to change our resource path format to the Linux-compatible /scheme/scheme_name/path/to/resource. Paths that do not begin with /scheme will be assumed to refer to the file scheme, so /path/to/my_file is treated by the system as /scheme/file/path/to/my_file, but the application will only see the /path/to/my_file portion. Using this format, normal paths now look just like Linux paths, while drivers and other resources can still be addressed without breaking software.

Ron Williams

The change is an ongoing process, so you might encounter some issues related to it in the coming time.