March 2025

[elydre]

March 2025

This release note will probably be shorter than usual, as last month was rather quiet for profanOS. The new argument parser for command-line programs is now complete and has been integrated into a large number of commands.

About CARP

The most tedious part of creating command line tools is managing arguments. Standard functions such as getopt already exist, but they are rarely pleasant to use and often incomplete. CARP - command-line arguments parser - is a part of libpf that lets you set up options very easily, automatically parse arguments and then read options as required. Replacing the argument parsers of each command with carp took a considerable amount of time, but now everything is more uniform, easier to maintain and safe from parsing bugs.

15-line C program using carp - help page automatically generated

Change Log

Command line

• rewrite several commands to use libpf argument parser.
• option -n in readelf to display required libraries.
• option -r in grep to search recursively in directories.
• option -n in less to disable long line wrapping.
• stability and performance improvements to rim editor.
• patches in deluge to fix R_386_COPY resolution.

Olivine

• internal fstat function to get file informations.
• option -e to ignore errors during execution.
• option -b to disable executable search in PATH.
• total rewrite of debug internal function.
• support for multiple-word pseudos.
• support for ESC key in multiple line input.

libc.so

• added posix define PATH_MAX to limits.h.
• added O_NODIR flag to open function.
• implementation of nanosleep in time.h.
• patch memory leaks in rename function.

libpf.so

• created the argument parser carp (see wiki).
• added TSI_NO_AUTO_WRAP flag to tsi (see wiki).

Miscellaneous

• make bdisk adds source code in /user/src directory (not /src as before).
• update to limine v8 the tools/limine.sh script.
• rename /bin/h to /bin/f for historical reasons.

You can test profanOS from your web browser without installing anything right here.

Thank you xx