Atmosphere/docs/roadmap.md

Planned Features

atmosphère has a number of features that are either works-in-progress or planned. Please note that while time-estimates are given, they are loose, and things may be completed sooner or later than advertised.

The following descriptions were last updated on January 14th, 2021

tma reimplementation

• Description tma ("target manager agent") is a system module that manages communication between the Switch and a client PC. Atmosphere's implementation will allow homebrew on the switch to communicate with a connected PC to do various operations such as exchanging data or interacting with files. It will also serve as the communicator for Atmosphère's planned debugger. This will also include PC-side software for interacting with the Switch.
• Development Status: Planned. Switch-side code is fully implemented but needs heavy refactoring/rebasing, as the code was originally authored in 2018.
• Estimated Time: 2021-2022.

dmnt.gen2 reimplementation

• Description: A reimplementation of the Switch's debug monitor, dmnt will provide an interface for debugging applications or system modules running on the Switch. This will include a gdbstub for debugging actively-running system components or applications.
• Development Status: Planned
• Estimated Time: 2021-2022

fs reimplementation

• Description: Following mesosphère's completion, atmosphère will have reimplemented all components of the BootImagePackage firmware except for the filesystem services system module. Reimplementing fs will allow for fixing Nintendo bugs (such as corruption when using exFAT filesystems and encoding inconsistencies with UTF-8 and Shift-JIS).
• Development Status: Planned.
• Estimated Time: 2021-2022.

settings reimplementation

• Description: A planned reimplementation of the settings system module, and with it a removal of the settings mitm. This will greatly simplify atmosphère's boot process, and will allow much more flexible control over the various system settings.
• Development Status: Pending development by Adubbz.
• Estimated Time: Unclear, pending developer availability.

thermosphère

• Description: A general-purpose hypervisor, thermosphère will enable the virtualization of the Switch's operating system; this is planned to enable debugging of the Switch's kernel.
• Development Status: Pending development by TuxSH.
• Estimated Time: Unclear, pending developer availability.

other planned features

• Description: General system stability improvements to enhance the user's experience.
• Development Status: Undergoing active development by all members of the atmosphère team.
• Estimated Time: June 15th.

Completed features

The following features were previously included under the planned features section and are now complete.

Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of features present in atmosphère, and only serves to indicate what from the above has been completed.

system updater homebrew

• Description: A user homebrew making use of the new system updater api, so that users can actually use the new api in practice.
• Completion Time: July 2020

system updater api

• Description: A planned extension api for stratosphere (tenatively ams:su), this will provide an interface for homebrew to safely install system upgrades or downgrades. This will allow for much more easily transitioning safely between different versions of the operating system.
• Completion Time: June 2020

exosphere re-write

• Description: exosphère, atmosphère's reimplementation of Horizon's Secure Monitor, was the first component authored for the project in early 2018. It is written in C, and in a style very different from the rest of atmosphère's code. In addition, exosphère was written to conform to constraints that no longer apply in an environment where it is not launched from the web browser, and where using a custom firmware image to orchestrate wake-from-sleep is possible. exosphère currently uses all but 1 KB of the space available to it, putting it at risk of breaking as future firmware updates are supported. A re-write will solve these issues.
• Completion Time: June 2020

mesosphere

• Description: mesosphère is a reimplementation of the Horizon operating system's Kernel. It aims to provide an open-source reference for Nintendo's code.
• Estimated Time: September 2020

ams-on-mariko

• Description: Atmosphere cannot run as-is on Mariko hardware. A large number of changes are needed in many components. Although secure monitor support is complete in exosphere, additional work is needed on the bootloader and stratosphere sides as well. Mariko support will also require further design thought; atmosphere's debugging design heavily relies on reboot-to-payload and (more generally) the ability to perform warmboot bootrom hax at will. This is not possible on Mariko, and will require a new design/software support for whatever solution is chosen.
• Completion Time: January 2021