The S.Ha.R.K. News Page

Nov 14, 2007

• New S.Ha.R.K. version 1.5.4 available here, now runs on virtual machines like QEmu and VirtualBox.

Jan 17, 2007

• New S.Ha.R.K. version 1.5.3 available here, now fully GPL compatible.

Oct 26, 2006

• New S.Ha.R.K. version 1.5.2.1 available here.

Sep 20, 2006

• New S.Ha.R.K. version 1.5.2 compatible with gcc 4x available here.

Aug 21, 2006

• CiberMouse competition library for S.Ha.R.K. available here (RTSS 2006).

Jul 25, 2006

• S.Ha.R.K. 1.5.1 available for download here.

Jul 18, 2006

• New Tracer manual draft released; documentation section restyled; experimental txt and html manual versions. See here.

Jul 17, 2006

• New S.Ha.R.K. roadmap released.

Jun 29, 2006

• The S.Ha.R.K. Forum is constantly growing; quick link to the Forum added to homepage.

Mar 01, 2006

• The S.Ha.R.K. Quick Guide is now available.

Feb 14, 2006

• First European Laboratory on Real-Time and Control

Jan 24, 2006

• The SHaRK 1.5 bootdisk CD-ROM ISO is now available.

Jan 16, 2006

• SHaRK 1.5 is out!!! It includes good support for exit(), endcycle as a cancellation point, new scheduling module directories, and many cleanups!

Jan 18, 2005

• The First SHaRK Workshop Call For Partecipation is out!

Jan 6, 2005

• The SHaRK FAQs are now online under the Forum website!!!

Jan 5, 2005

• The SHaRK Forums are online!!! Join in!!!

Dec 16, 2004

• Beta of the SHaRK 1.4 Manuals !!!
• REALLY COOL demo of applications made with shark available under the demos section!

Jun 21, 2004

• SHaRK 1.4 Final is out !!!
• Kernel final adjustments.
• New important changes !!!
  To know all the version 1.4 details, check this page

May 31, 2004

• SHaRK 1.4 RC 1 is out.
• BTTV Fixed.
• Bugs removed.
• New important changes !!!
  To know all the version 1.4 details, check this page

May 21, 2004

• New S.Ha.R.K. Web Pages!

May 12, 2004

• SHaRK 1.4 BETA 3 is out.
• BTTV Ready.
• CPUFREQ Ready.
• New important changes !!!
  To know all the version 1.4 details, check this page

May 05, 2004

• SHaRK 1.4 BETA 2 is out, problem with DJGPP solved.
• New package MINDJ333.ZIP, for correct Shark cross-compiling under DJGPP.
• New important changes !!!
  To know all the version 1.4 details, check this page

Apr 26, 2004

• SHaRK 1.4 BETA 1 is out, revolution is coming !
• New important changes !!!
  To know all the version 1.4 details, check this page

Jan 17, 2004

• SHaRK 1.22 is out !
• Bugs Removed (printk, gcc 3.3.2 support)
• Servo Control Library, release of stable version (Look at Servo Library webpage)
• Joystick Driver
• S.Ha.R.K. Website Restyled. Added the new Projects section.

Nov 19, 2003

• SHaRK 1.21 is out !
• Dangerous bug removed in task_kill !
• APIC Support for more precise timer events managment
• TSC timer functions optimized (90 ns to read the system time on a Pentium 2 GHz)
• ./shark.cfg: Edit this file to setup shark new stuffs (APIC, TSC, TIMER PERFORMANCE)

Oct 22, 2003

• SHaRK 1.2 is out !
• A lot of bugs removed (especially a nasty one inside the network driver)
• New calibration routine for TSC
• TFTP client for UDP file transfer
• SERVO motor library (a specific web page will be ready soon)
• New demos: Software oscilloscope with PCI6024E, TFTP demo

Jun 11, 2003

• SHaRK 1.1 is out !
• New framegrabber support (BTTV, inherited from the BTTV driver for Linux)
• New framegrabber demo BTTVDEMO
• New Demos (Biliardo, Astro, Autostrada, Telesco)
• Bug fixes (TSC support, Network dellocation, VESA SVGALib)
• Portuguese version of Install.txt (leiame.txt, thanks to Antonio Pedro Mariano Junior)

Jul 10, 2003

• New papers about S.Ha.R.K. (from Italy and from Brasil) are available for download on the download page!
• A new mailing list for italian users (mainly intended for students) is available!

Jun 11, 2003

• New framegrabber support (BTTV, inherited from the BTTV driver for Linux)
• New framegrabber demo BTTVDEMO
• New Demos (Biliardo, Astro, Autostrada, Telesco)
• Bug fixes (TSC support, Network dellocation, VESA SVGALib)
• Portuguese version of Install.txt (leiame.txt, thanks to Antonio Pedro Mariano Junior)

May 16, 2003

The slides on the web site have been updated with the newest presentation I did (and I will do) at the University of Pavia, at the University of Catania (Enna Branch of the Engineering faculty), and at the University of Siena in May 2003. Moreover,some links have been updated!

May 5, 2003

Shark 1.0 released! You can find it in the download page... It includes:

• O.C.E.R.A. Memory Manager
• Advanced Timer (TSC and CMOS support)
• Svgalib VESA and NEOMAGIC card support
• MESA 3D libraries can now compile under DOS
• New demos
• Updated documentation
• and... a lot of bugs removed!

Mar 27, 2003

The Shark CVS Repository is now available to everyone with an anonymous account. Checkout instructions can be found in the download page!

Mar 26, 2003

The Shark Bugzilla project on lancelot is now visible also from people that are not registered in it (excuse me for this mess)... Moreover, it seems that there are some problems in the Bugzilla registration. In particular, a lot of people are registering into the Bugzilla server but they are not getting back the password for logging in. If you log in and you do not receive your password by a few minutes, please send me an e-mail and I'll fix it!

Mar 24, 2003

A new mailing list is available to discuss about all the S.Ha.R.K. development issues... Check it out here!!!

Mar 21, 2003

A new preview snapshot has been released. It includes a few bugfix on S.Ha.R.K. version 0.4, a PNG and a ZLib libraries that can be useful to load textured to be used with the Mesa 3D library.As usual, in the download page!

Mar 17, 2003

A new preview snapshot has been released. It is not really stable yet, but includes a lot of new features like new hardware support, the new OSLib, MESA 3D graphics, SVGALib, ... You can find it on the download page!!!

Jan 17, 2003

A Bugzilla server has been activated at the ReTiS Lab with an active project called S.Ha.R.K. All the informations about bugs and feature requests can be found and should be posted there...

Moreover, I decided to add some meaningful version numbers to the project. You can find them in the download page ;-)

Jan 8, 2003

A new preview Snapshot is out! This includes:

• New scheduling modules interface implemented (it basically follows the 16 Dec 2002 proposal);
• TASK_MODEL: level numbers now separated from pclass;
• set_exchandler_grx() and set_exchandler_txt() removed;
• task_delay(), task_endcycle() removed;
• ll_gettime now remapped into kern_gettime();
• event_delete now remapped in kern_event_delete();
• scheduler code often used into the kernel now included in a kern_epilogue_macro();
• request_time removed from the task descriptor;
• include/modules/code.h removed.

Please note that the old scheduling modules interface is no more supported. Please try to use the new one ;-)... A step-by-step porting to the new scheduling module interface is also available in the download page!!!

S.Ha.R.K. manuals also updated (they now include internal filesystem description).

This is still a development version, please check it out and find some remaining bugs ;-) ... The "stable" snapshot is still the Easter Snapshot :-)

Finally, into the download section, you will find from now on a "RFC" section that contains all the known problems of the system... Of course everyone can contribute!

Dec 16, 2002

Proposal on the new shark scheduling module interface updated. Please send all the comments you have on that proposal before Christmas. After that date, we will probably start implementing it!

Dec 2, 2002

A first proposal for the new shark scheduling module interface is out!!! Check it into the download page (RFC section)...

Nov 21, 2002

It is maybe the time to modify and simplify the internal scheduling module interface.

Here is a Request for comments ... Often when writing a scheduling module, a lot of problems are encountered due sometimes to the cryptic S.Ha.R.K. interface...

All the people that used S.Ha.R.K. to write a scheduling module are strongly encouraged to give some hints reporting the problems they had, giving suggestions for changing (cleaning) the internal scheduling module interface.

Any help is appreciated (and of course you will be listed into the people web page ;-) )

Nov 11, 2002

A beta version of the next S.Ha.R.K. Snapshot is out! This includes:

• Updated demos (especially demos/base, demos/block, demos/tracer).
• Parallel port driver.
• Some modifications into the internal scheduling modules interface (IQUEUE support, QUEUE and QQUEUE removed, task_delay removed (use nanosleep instead!), UNVALID constants now are INVALID ;-) ).
• UDP Tracer, updated support for JTracer.
• Updated documentation: added Volume 5 (Tracer).

Oct 1, 2002

After a long time we are back with:

• The Shark CVS browsable online (look at the Download page)...
• An updated S.Ha.R.K. Demos Snapshots... that includes a few new games and the IST FIRST Project D-OS2 deliverable...
• The demos distribution does no more include the documentation files, that can be downloaded separately from the Demos web page...

May 20, 2002

New S.Ha.R.K. slides available! Moreover, it is now possible to compile S.Ha.R.K. under DJGPP and Windows staying in Windows mode!

Check it out the files in the download page...

April 5, 2002

Sorry, all the ReTiS Lab is moving to Pontedera, a little city 20 km from Pisa, Italy. Since also our "glorious" server gandalf.sssup.it will be moved, expect some problems with the network: that is, The server will not be reachable for a few days starting from Monday the 8th...

Easter 2002

• New (Easter) S.Ha.R.K. snapshot available for download! This snapshot includes a series of small bug fixes on the network layer, on signal handling and some other small stuffs...
• Also another demo (simcity) is now available for download!

Dec 20, 2001

• Web Site restyling :-)

Oct 23, 2001

• New S.Ha.R.K. snapshot available for download! This snapshot includes also some bug fixes that appear sometimes at system shutdown...
• New demos available! (check the demos directory for them!)

Oct 16, 2001

• The S.Ha.R.K. Inverted pendulum web page is now on-line!!! (a link has also been inserted on the download page :-) )
• A new Snapshot will be ready in a few days... with a lot of new exciting demos!!!

Aug 29, 2001
The S.Ha.R.K. Manual is now available for download in the download pages! It is now composed by 4 volumes, and it explains all the things you ever wanted to know abou the Kernel! (I hope O:-) )

Aug 29, 2001
S.Ha.R.K. first public snapshot Birthday :-)

Jul 18, 2001
Thanks to Andrea Francia, University of Pavia, Italy, a driver for the Realtek rtl8139 network card is now available for download on the download page (its name is Patch2; diffs also availables...).

Jul 3, 2001
Thanks to Marco Ziglioli, University of Pavia, Italy, a driver for the National Instruments PCI6025E card is now available for download on the download page (its name is Patch1...).

Jun 27, 2001
We updated the boot disk with a new image that have both GRUB and FreeDOS+X: In that way, you can put the image on the floppy and you can boot without relying on any Operating System on your PC...

X 5.0 has been released!!! (you can find it in the Dos utilities package!!!)

RAWRITE is now available in a local mirror!

Fixed the DOS installation package (Yesterday I forgot the DOS utilities package!)

Jun 26, 2001
New S.Ha.R.K. Snapshot released! It includes the latest OSLib version, all the demos available for the 26 April Snapshot and some bug fixes... The Snapshot can be found on the download page...

Jun 22, 2001
S.Ha.R.K. pre-release now available! This version is the evolution of the unstable snapshot. In a few days we will distribute a new snapshot! The pre-release can be found in the download page...

Jun 6, 2001
New Scheduling Module available!!! It is very similar to the EDF Module distributed with the kernel sources, except that:

• It does not support hard sporadic tasks
• It does not raise a deadline exception
• It does not raise a wcet violation exception
• Instead of raising an exception, the module simply COUNTS deadline misses and wcet exaustions..

Jun 4, 2001

• A demo that explains how to use DOS_fXXX functions is now available!
• Modified the default exception handler; now it works correctly also with graphic applications! (see the FAQs for an explanation of how it works now...)
• FAQs updated!!!
• We forgot to distribute the myapp package into the 26 April snapshot. Now,You can find it correctly (We hope :-) )

May 22, 2001

• Fixed a strange behaviour of sem_wait()
• Fixed a little bug in asynchronous task cancellation

May 22, 2001

• DOS_fwrite bug corrected
• Another small demo available...
• Please do not print more than 500 bytes with kern_printf :-)

May 21, 2001

• Found a little bug into sys_abort() (exit functions with NO_AT_ABORT did not work :-( )
• Two new small demos available...
• Fixed description into the install.bat of sharkdos.zip (to install the old sharkdos.zip simply type something like install C:\SHARK ...)
• Also found a little bug into DOS_fwrite ... it will be fixed as soon as possible!

In any case, please send all the problems you have at shark-help@gandalf.sssup.it!!!

May 16, 2001
  To ease the configuration and installation of S.Ha.R.K. under MS-DOS systems, we prepared a single ZIP file with a nice (we hope) script. Try it, it's on the download page!!!

May 4, 2001
  Development news:

• Claudio Melita from University of Pavia started the porting of the FreeBSD sound drivers under S.Ha.R.K.!
• An A/D converter driver has been written, it will be available soon!

April 30, 2001
  Due to some disc space problems, old snapshots has been removed from the web site. If you need one of them, please send me an e-mail.

April 26, 2001

• Another S.Ha.R.K. Snapshot released :-)
• A patch to move from the snapshot of April 19, to the snapshot of April, 26 is also available!
• Updated FAQs!
• A set of 150 Slides are now available for download. The Slides were used in a Course in the University of Pavia to teach S.Ha.R.K. to some students... You can use them to teach S.Ha.R.K. to other persons or to learn S.Ha.R.K. yourself!
• A new mailing list has been created to create a feedback between S.Ha.R.K. developers and users!

• New S.Ha.R.K. Snapshot released :-)
• An unstable snapshot with the latest version of OSLib is also available for download!
• A new compile howto has been written, with another new template application!!
• A copy of the OSLib 0.1 manual is also online!!!

February 27, 2001
   New S.Ha.R.K. Snapshot Released! This snapshot is fundamentally a repackaging and cleaning of the previous snapshot... Moreover, some modules are now distributed as separate template applications. Finally, we have updated many headers in the source files and we have included the 16 Jan 01 patch!

February 13, 2001
   A S.Ha.R.K. paper is accepted on the 13th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems!!!!

February 12, 2001
   S.Ha.R.K. user manual updated (but it is not complete yet...)

February 10, 2001
   If You don't know who is the man in the S.Ha.R.K. logo, click here!

February 8, 2001
   Updated the S.Ha.R.K. FAQs!!!

February 5, 2001
   Added shark-announce, the S.Ha.R.K. Mailing list!

February 5, 2001
   Kernel Overview Updated (chapter 4 fixed).

February 2, 2001
   A draft of the S.Ha.R.K. user manual is now available in the download page!

January 16, 2001

• Source patch available: fixed a little bug in the boot and in the network code;
• GRUB bootdisk image now available (GRUB version 0.5.95, newer versions may not work :-( );
• Old snapshots removed.

January 8, 2001
   Here a little todo list for the next 2 months... I hope to fix it as soon as possible...

• C++ header compatibility (extern "C" for now... maybe in a later future also the C++ libraries will come...);
• Header substitution (now many header files are marked with names are inherited from older projects);
• New Scheduling Modules should arrive soon;
• The Documentation writing is in progress... we plan to prepare also a User Manual similar to that of the Hartik Kernel, and a Quick reference guide will also be published in a few days;
• a BootDisk image for Linux users will be available soon;
• We plan to switch soon to the new version of OSLib.