Chisaka is an attempt at building an operating system, using the C++ programming language. It is targeted towards x86_64 processors. The operating system is at an extremely primitive stage, so do not expect much.
To bootstrap Chisaka, I used the limine bootloader following the limine-cpp-template template.
from root, type:
make run
which compiles the operating system to an iso file and spawns a x86_64 processor to run it. More details can be found below.
The following lists resources I found helpful in building this OS:
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OSDEV wiki: https://wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page
Contains a goldmine of information, and useful pointers to research for where you want to take your operating system further.
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Intel x86 Processor Documentation: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/intel-sdm.html
Detailed explanation for all you want to know of intel x86 processors. Get it from the source.
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GCC's C++ Standard Library Implementation: https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.6.2/libstdc++/api/index.html
Great reference for building standard library implementations.
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Textbooks:
In general I prefer textbooks which contains theory and also implementation, where the implementation is used to frame the theory. I have found two textbooks I have got along with, those being:
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Operating Systems Design and Implementation: Design and Implementation. Third Edition (Prentice Hall Software Series).
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Operating System Design: The Xinu approach.
OSDI tends to be more encyclopedic and provides surveys of existing algorithms, meanwhile xinu is a fairly simple system to learn and hack on. OSDI contains references to other algorithms which will prove useful when experimenting.
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This repository will demonstrate how to set up a basic x86-64 kernel in C++ using Limine.
It is recommended to cross reference the contents of this repository with the Limine Bare Bones OSDev wiki page.
Any make command depends on GNU make (gmake) and is expected to be run using it. This usually means using make on most GNU/Linux distros, or gmake on other non-GNU systems.
All make all* targets depend on a GNU-compatible C++ toolchain capable of generating x86-64 ELF objects. Usually gcc(g++)/binutils or clang++/llvm/lld provided by any x86-64 UNIX like (including Linux) distribution will suffice.
Additionally, building an ISO with make all requires xorriso, and building a HDD/USB image with make all-hdd requires sgdisk (usually from gdisk or gptfdisk packages) and mtools.
Running make all will compile the kernel (from the kernel/ directory) and then generate a bootable ISO image.
Running make all-hdd will compile the kernel and then generate a raw image suitable to be flashed onto a USB stick or hard drive/SSD.
Running make run will build the kernel and a bootable ISO (equivalent to make all) and then run it using qemu (if installed).
Running make run-hdd will build the kernel and a raw HDD image (equivalent to make all-hdd) and then run it using qemu (if installed).
The run-uefi and run-hdd-uefi targets are equivalent to their non -uefi counterparts except that they boot qemu using a UEFI-compatible firmware.