What tools are You using to develop an OS ?

[CopperMan]

Hi, everyone !

I'am intresting what tools do you use to develop an OS ?

Interesting things are following :

1) Compilers, translators ( C, ASM ).
2) Loaders (self-written or third-party).
3) PC Emulators.
4) Debuggers.
5) And any other tool types that I may miss.


If you intresting I use :

1) GCC 4.0.1 / NASM
2) Self-written loader
3) VMWare WS 5.0, Bochs 2.2, Qemu.
4) Bochs integrated debugger

P.S. And of coz if some one knows about C/ASM IDE that is usefull in this situation, please let me know.

[Candy]

Interesting things are following :

1) Compilers, translators ( C, ASM ).

GCC 3.4 for compiling the OS including the C++ part of it, NASM for the assembly files (or in the newest bleeding edge booting code, YASM), LD, objdump etc.

2) Loaders (self-written or third-party).

Own loader, v 0.0.1, 0.0.2.2 and the newest, which is 0.0.3pre.

3) PC Emulators.

Bochs.

4) Debuggers.

Hexdump, bochs debugger, objdump, printf.

5) And any other tool types that I may miss.

mkfs.msdos for the older versions (to make an image), dd for all copying.

[proxy]

i use vmware 5.x (and occasionally bochs if i have a seriously annoying bug). gcc 3.4.4, grub as a loader.

I also have my makefile generate a symbol map and a dissasembly with c/c++ source interleaved so i can see what assembly i get for a given line of code.

i generate my symbol map with this:

Code: Select all

/usr/bin/nm -C kernel | /usr/bin/sort > kernel.sym

and i generate my assembly listing with:

Code: Select all

/usr/bin/objdump -C -d -S --no-show-raw-insn kernel > kernel.lst

note, for these to work, you generally want to build with debug info (-g in gcc) and then strip afterwards.

proxy

PS: the -C in the nm and objdump commands just makes them resolve c++ name mangling, if you aren't using c++ they are unneccessary.

[Exabyte256]

Using Windows XP, DJGPP, NASM, Bochs and the C++ 2005 express IDE. They seem to work well.

[Candy]

PS: the -C in the nm and objdump commands just makes them resolve c++ name mangling, if you aren't using c++ they are unneccessary.

Hm... never knew they could decode it for you, so I just learned how to do that by hand. Can be very useful ;D.

[Rob]

I'm still deciding on what tools I may want to use. NASM will
no doubt be on the list. However I'm having a hard time
figuring out what C compiler to use. I'm on the Windows
platform and really liked how simple it was to get NASM and
use it. GCC seems very hard to get / install (I don't want a
zillion other [little] things installed).

Candy: why yasm? Is it because of 64-bit support? (I'm not sure if NASM has this [yet]?)

For emulation I already use Virtual PC and no doubt will check
out VMWare and Bochs as well. Some extra testing "platforms"
sounds like a good idea!

Rob

p.s. one of these days I'll make myself an actual account for this board. Hang in there

[Candy]

Candy: why yasm? Is it because of 64-bit support? (I'm not sure if NASM has this [yet]?)

Yup. Making a 64-bit boot code work is hard without 64-bit asm support (and I'm not going to that %brain-dead $unreadable $at&t syntax).

[Brendan]

Hi,

I use YASM for 64 bit code and NASM for everything else.

I have my own "build utility" which replaces "make", converts code to HTML pages, runs NASM/YASM/NDISASM, creates a hex dump and creates a list of debugging markers. I'm still looking for a 64 bit disassembler that'll do Intel syntax...

The boot loader/s are self-written. I'm using Bochs and occasionally Qemu. The only debuggers I use are built into these emulators.

Other than that I'm using Kwrite, KDE shortcut keys, "cp floppy.img /dev/fd0", Mozilla and Google.


Cheers,

Brendan

[Cjmovie]

I'm using GCC (No idea what version) under Cygwin, NASM for assembly code.

I use my own bootloader, which is setup into two stages, and can read a max of 4mb of data total from a max of 160 modules. It also initializes pMode (stage2), uses unreal mode, sets up paging, etc.

I also have my own set of simple tools: A hex viewer, a program to make floppy images formatted with my file system (given the files to include on it), and a simple program that counts how many builds of my code I've done .

As for editor, I use Dev-C++ for my C code, notepad for my ASM ;D. Sometimes I use notepad for C code, or Dev-C++ for ASM (like to look up where line 424 is, etc.).

As far as emulators, I use Bochs with the integrated Debugger.

[Exabyte256]

Hrm. Something I never thought of... maybe I could actually use the whole of Visual C++ 2005e - not just the IDE, but the compiler and linker. It'd make it a lot easier to mix assembly and C code with commands such as __declspec(naked) for interrupt handler functions. I wonder if it'd be possible to make an OS with it though...

[Pype.Clicker]

1) Compilers, translators ( C, ASM ).

GCC (2.95.3 so far, but i'm trying hard to have it work with 3.3)
CodeMonkey -- some homebrew perl-based tool to parse and transcode C source
NASM -- for the nitty-gritty tidbits

2) Loaders (self-written or third-party).

SOS (home-brew) bootloader, which will have to be ported to GRUB pretty soon (i'm running closer to the limits of SOS)
in-kernel module loader (home-brew file format derivating of ELF/COFF)
in-module programs loader (home-brew too)

3) PC Emulators.

bochs when i need to make sure it works, qemu when it comes to device management.

4) Debuggers.

objdump, in-kernel debugging tool, bochs & qemu integrated debuggers, small "krash" tool to resolve eip addresses into file & line number and see what's really going on ...

[bubach]

I'm kind of curious why so few people with Windows use OpenWatcom, if they don't like the hassle with some GCC port on windows..?
I haven't tested it myself, but i guess you don't have to live with the ugly at&t syntax for inline asm either, so i can't see why not to use it if you'r on a windows machine.

Anyway, i use fasm (supports 64-bit) and fasmw as IDE on my XP machine. cli, hlt and BOCHS for debugging.

[CopperMan]

I'm kind of curious why so few people that uses Windows doesn't use OpenWatcom

OpenWatcom does'nt support x86-64 ( first ),
And i think we'll never see version 1.4.

[Dex4u]

I am supprized, that no one has yet got there OS, far enough developed, to use it, along with home developed tools.
May be if we did, we would have a differant idea's on the direction of our OS Dev, eg: less big idea's and more practical problems from the user's point.

[distantvoices]

*rofl*

@dex4u: small ideas, developped step by step to form the big idea are what is required, eh?

current struggle with networking code (maaaaaaan, I'm kinda weary at the moment), development of small widgets for my gui ...

Debugging -> built in register reporter upon crash, objdump -d, bochs & qemu debugging, buildt in debugging stuff (printf mostly)

deploying -> gcc,nasm, make

development -> /dev/brain, paper, pencil, KATE, /dev/brain

I daresay that's all about it.

stay safe