The display's first use of threads (docs/threading.md, docs/display.md). The
compositor stays the single owner of the framebuffer — only the main
service.run loop touches the backend and layer stack — and a dedicated
mouse-listener thread runs beside it:
- Listener: blocks on input.subscribeMouse(), accumulates relative dx/dy
into an absolute cursor position clamped to the screen, and hands it to
the compositor. It never touches the compositor, so no lock guards the
framebuffer; a parked next() lets the core halt.
- CursorChannel: a single-slot latest-value cell under a Thread.Mutex (the
renderer wants where the cursor is now, not a replay of deltas), with a
coalesced self-ipc.send poke that wakes the main loop — parked in
replyWait — as a message-notification. At most one poke is queued while
the last is undrained, so a fast mouse can't flood the endpoint.
- Render: the cursor is a top-z compositor layer; on the poke the main loop
moves it via configure + present (which damages old + new footprints).
The display binary opts into threads (addThreadedUserBinary), and
input-source gains a "mouse" mode that publishes pure motion to drive it.
Two kernel-level findings this surfaced, both fixed:
1. IPC handles do not cross threads. The handle table lives on the Task, so
the listener can't reuse the main loop's endpoint handle — it
ipc.lookup(.display)s its own handle to the same endpoint to poke through.
2. Concurrent IPC from two threads raced unlocked kernel state. The display
is the first process issuing IPC syscalls from two threads at once, which
exposed a data race (flaky #GP in installEntry): create_ipc_endpoint /
ipc_register / ipc_lookup allocate from the kernel heap and mutate the
global registry, endpoint refcounts, and handle tables without the big
kernel lock. They were safe only while a process couldn't race itself.
They now sync.enter() like call/reply_wait/send already did (the kernel
heap has no lock of its own yet — heap.zig: "a lock comes with
threads/SMP" — so the big lock keeps its callers serialized).
Test: -Dtest-case=display-cursor (smp:4) spawns the input service, the
threaded display, and input-source in mouse mode; asserts the display's
"cursor tracking mouse ok" marker once the cursor has tracked a run of motion
end to end. Verified green 6/6 under stress (the race hit ~1-in-4 before the
lock fix) and in the full 29-case QEMU guardrail suite; zig build test clean.
Extend the input service beyond the keyboard so mouse and joystick/gamepad
drivers can broadcast too, with per-device publish and subscribe methods.
- protocol: KeyEvent joins MouseEvent (motion/buttons/scroll) and
JoystickEvent (axes/buttons), all carried in a common InputEvent envelope
tagged with a DeviceKind. A subscribe request carries a device_mask, so a
subscriber names the classes it wants and the service routes each event only
to interested subscribers (a mouse-only listener never wakes for keystrokes).
- runtime: per-device publish methods (publishKeyboardEvent/publishMouseEvent/
publishJoystickEvent) and subscribe helpers (subscribeKeyboard/Mouse/Joystick,
each typed, plus subscribe(mask)/subscribeAll returning the tagged envelope).
- service: subscriber table gains a device_mask; broadcast routes by the
event's device class.
- mouse driver now publishes (synthetic) mouse events like the keyboard driver;
input-source cycles all three classes; input-test subscribes to all and only
emits its "ok" marker once it has received one of each class — so the passing
test proves per-device routing, not just delivery. Real HID decoding stays a
follow-up.
No kernel changes: ipc_send is generic and the 36-byte InputEvent fits its
64-byte payload. Full QEMU suite 48/48; serial log confirms keyboard, mouse,
and joystick all reach one subscription.
Programs can now subscribe to keyboard events (key_down/key_up/key_press)
and drivers can broadcast them, through a new user-space input service.
The delivery model is forced by danos IPC: a synchronous rendezvous holds
one pending reply, so a server cannot park N subscribers blocked in a
"wait for next event" call — delivery must be push. But a synchronous push
has no timeout and the kernel never wakes a sender parked on a dead peer's
endpoint, so one dying subscriber would hang all input. So this lands the
roadmap's planned asynchronous buffered send and builds the service on it:
- ipc_send (syscall 26): non-blocking post to an endpoint's bounded payload
ring, delivered through reply_wait as a buffered message (notify_message_bit).
A full ring drops the oldest. It can never hang on a dead/slow peer.
- input-protocol + runtime.input helpers (subscribe/next, connectSource/
publish) — the first real consumer of M13 capability passing: a subscriber
hands the service its own endpoint as a capability.
- input service (fan-out via ipc_send, dead-subscriber pruning), a synthetic
input-source, and input-test; the ps2-bus keyboard driver publishes to it.
Real IRQ1 scancode decoding (which must live in the bus, the PNP0303 owner)
is a documented follow-up; the source is synthetic for now.
- build/init wiring, an `input` QEMU case, and docs/input.md.
Full QEMU suite 48/48, including the new input case and every IPC/endpoint
regression (ipc, ipc-call, ipc-cap, vfs, hpet, bus, irqfree).
Daniel Samson
Daniel Samson