Minimal Bare Metal Zig Kernel for aarch64
Very basic aarch64 kernel written in Zig.
Status
I started this project with the goal of writing a simple kernel with a few drivers (in zig). Since Zig is not completely stable (yet; on aarch64), I found a few issues and quirks one of which is a compiler bug. The compiler bug is an issue with struct returns, that is not resolved yet. It's not a dealbreaker though, since one can maneuver around that quite easily. I posted that issue on Zigs git with a complete description of the observed behaviour and hypothesis: ziglang/zig#11859. For debugging purposes I implemented the ramfb driver in C as well(which helped me to resolve the issue): https://github.com/luickk/qemu-ramfb-aarch64-driver and the arm a53 interrupt controller gicv2: https://github.com/luickk/zig-gicv2.
As up to now, depending on the build mode (more on that in the gh issue), the kernel either runs fine & the ramfb driver works or it doesn't boot.
Setup
Dependencies
- qemu-system-aarch64
- zig
To build the kernel just run
zig build and to emulate it,
zig build emulate-serial
Ramfb (simple virtual display)
The driver can be found here (my C implementation)
Manual Build Scripts (deprecated)
Dependencies
- aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc
- aarch64-linux-gnu-ld
- qemu-system-aarch64
- zig
The manual build can be found in build_scripts/ and consists of the necessary build scripts for a standarad aarch64 virtual machine. Just run build_toolchain.sh as well as run_qemu.sh to test the kernel.
A full implementation using the zig builder is in process.
Demo
