Clay - a basic x86 operating system

Goals

• Become comfortable with C and x86 assembly
• Create a system that boots with no help (other than a bootloader like GRUB) on an x86-based machine
• Inside that system, create an environment to read and write text to a file
• Read code from a file and execute it in this operating environment
  • TODO: What language?

Build and run

Install cross-compiler building dependencies from here: https://wiki.osdev.org/GCC_Cross-Compiler#Installing_Dependencies. Also install xorriso, grub2-pc and qemu-system-x86 (or equivalent) packages to build and run ISO.

# Load environment
source setup/prefix.sh

# Install dependencies (one-time)
setup/build-binutils.sh
setup/build-gcc.sh

# Build kernel and ISO
cd kernel
make

# Run on QEMU
# -d int produces debugging output on interrupts
# -no-reboot, -no-shutdown useful to catch CPU before it triple faults and resets
qemu-system-i386 -cdrom build/clay.iso -d int -no-reboot -no-shutdown

Resources

• OSDev wiki: https://wiki.osdev.org
• OSDev subreddit: https://reddit.com/r/OSDev

License

Code is provided under the MIT license; see LICENSE.md.