Next generation operating system
The main development environment used for this project is going to be Windows. A normal Windows compiler cannot be used since it will compile into an executable made to be run on the Windows platform. Hence a set of tools are needed before the initial development of this system.
- MinGW - Contains tools required for OS Development, such as GCC and binutils. For me I have mingw32-base, mingw32-gcc-g++ & mysys-base which is a part of the "Basic Setup". MinGW is also needed for GCC to function properly.
- i686-elf targeting GCC - Cross Compiler to target x86 instead of a specific platform such as Windows or Linux.
- QEMU - Emulator able to boot the resulting .bin file without us needing to convert it to a bootable ISO file.
For the setup to work, the executables for the above three tools needs to be in your system path
Why do I need a Cross Compiler?
System V ABI (Specification for calling conventions, obj file formats, exe formats etc..)
Interrupt Descriptor Table (IDT)
Interrupt Service Routines (ISR)
This project uses a so-called "unity build" which aims to include all (most) of the source code in one (or a few) compilation unit(s). The reasoning behind this is to simplify the file structure and reduce build times, since it means the compiler has to do less compilation and linking.
This has some implications though, that you as a contributor need to understand and follow.
- declare types in header files
- declare functions in source files
- include source files in - and only in -
kernel.c, which is the entry point of the OS- source files that are added in
kernel.cwill be available in all source files of the same compilation unit
- source files that are added in
- When to use
static/internal - How to handle circular dependencies / forward declarations?