Announcing XBB!

[steveklabnik]

Hey guys. A while ago we were all talking about releasing a bare bones D OS, similar to the Bare Bones article on the wiki. Today, wilkie and I threw it together. We took the code for XOmB, removed all of the exokernel stuff, heavily commented everything and how it works, re-did our entire directory structure, fixed our build process, and basically just did a whole lot of house cleaning.

Check it out, and give us some feedback:

• Source on GitHub
• Project Wiki Page

One small caveat: Apparently during the cleanup of our wiki, the D cross compiler section got mangled, and the one on the osdev wiki isn't really..complete? Expect to see the cross compiler stuff come fairly soon, but as of right now, it's by far the weakest part of our project. This is largely due to the whole GDC/LDC thing... LDC is still lacking a feature or two we need to compile the kernel, and so we're stuck with dead GDC for now. We're working closely with the LDC guys to get things taken care of, but these things take time...


EDIT: Oh yeah, we're number one on proggit right now. I mentioned osdev, so expect to see some hits coming your way

[steveklabnik]

Some XBB news!

First of all, XBB has no GDC dependencies at all. That's right, if you're running on 64 bit linux and you install LDC, you can compile XBB straight away, no cross compiler needed!

Secondly, we've added some English explanations to the already heavy amount of comments in the source itself. Complete with references, I give you XBB From Start to Finish. This is only the first draft, written over the last few hours, so please forgive any minor spelling or grammatical errors. However, this fully explains the entire process, from boot loader to kmain.

Enjoy!

[AndrewAPrice]

Thank you! I'm past this stage and learnt myself (I referenced XOmB quite a bit), but this is a useful resource for others who have seen the light. And those who are prideful and refuse to bow down shall be laid low and made unto dust.

[Fusion]

Would it at all be possible to get a 32bit D barebones going?

[steveklabnik]

Would it at all be possible to get a 32bit D barebones going?

For everyone who doesn't look at our wiki, yes, we can and we will, sometime in the future.

[Wilkie]

Yes, should be fairly simple to do. If I wasn't as busy, I'd just bump that out in a night... I've been planning to. Also, I have some bug fixes to deploy (merge back from XOmB proper) and I think I can do that within the month.

Thanks for the interest.

[Fusion]

Would it at all be possible to get a 32bit D barebones going?

For everyone who doesn't look at our wiki, yes, we can and we will, sometime in the future.

Just an FYI that was me on the talk page

[steveklabnik]

Just an FYI that was me on the talk page

I figured, which is why I also responded here.

wilkie is working on it right now, actually. Expect to see something soon.

[Wilkie]

Yeah, I am.

Trying to write shell scripts to configure the target... I hate shell scripts... I hate them so much.

Should be good to go and a good barebones that is extensible per target architecture (but no true code is written to power any of the targets of the barebones) in a week maybe.

Of course, since it is a public repo, if anybody would like to attempt writing something for an architecture outside of x86 (32bit and 64bit) with LDC or GDC (D language) then they can fork it.

[Zenith]

Sorry for resurrecting this thread a bit, but I appreciate the existence of XBB and how it's a nice gesture from the XOmB devs.

I was just wondering if it was possible to cross-compile LDC properly for it to run on Windows or 32-bit Linux while targeting 64-bit computers? My primary dev machine runs 32-bit Windows on a x86-64 dual-core, and it would be nice if I could cross-compile LDC to target that platform without having to install 64-bit Linux just to develop a D language OS (without using GDC).

Thanks!

[steveklabnik]

The last time that I talked to the LDC devs, a cross compiler did not exist. That may have changed, however, I couldn't find any information out about it.

You can still use gdc to build XBB; we just have a love affair with LDC.

[steveklabnik]

UPDATE: I just asked one of the LDC devs, and you can use the '-m64' or '-m32' switch to compile to a different architecture.

[Wilkie]

I know I said a month for the 32-bit bare bones... School took much of my time, but I did manage to fulfill that request.

A fully D compatible 32-bit build configuration has been added to the bare-bones. It can be built right alongside a 64-bit configuration without needing a cross compiler or any other change to the build environment. If anybody has an interest in it, they can check out the source in the first post and further discussion on working with the source in irc.freenode.net #xomb.