Ultibo core (Raspberry Pi, Free Pascal, No OS)

[Ultibo]

Something a little different?

More of a unikernel than an OS, you write your application and the compiler includes the required parts of the RTL into a bootable kernel image that doesn't need an OS to run.

Targeting Raspberry Pi initially but designed to be portable to other boards and platforms, the architecture is intended to be highly modular and gives users direct hardware access while still providing a degree of system protection via page table permissions.

Based on a single address space model with no kernel to user mode separation the thread is the primary unit of execution and allows application code to be scheduled independently from kernel code to produce a highly usable multitasking environment.

The feature list is quite comprehensive already and continues to grow with each release.

• Supports all models of Raspberry Pi (32 bit only at present)
• Pre-emptive threading
• Multicore support with all cores sharing workload
• Thread priority, affinity and migration
• Full range of locking and synchronization primitives
• USB support with drivers for Hub, Keyboard, Mouse, Storage and Network
• MMC/SD device support
• IPv4 stack including TCP, UDP, ICMP and raw sockets as well as DNS and DHCP protocols
• FAT12/16/32, NTFS and CDFS filesystem implementations
• Winsock 1.1 and Winsock 2 compatible sockets API
• Interrupt handling and hardware exception handling
• Drivers for common peripherals like GPIO, UART, Watchdog and Random
• Full RTL supporting all of the Free Pascal language features including strings, classes, objects, threadvars and exceptions
• Clock and timezone support
• Console and framebuffer support including bitmap fonts
• Basic shell (Console or Telnet) with file system commands and many others
• HTTP/SMTP/POP3/NTP/Syslog client and server modules included
• Includes example projects plus a demo image
• Available as a Windows installer with full IDE or as source only

Intended to be suitable for a wide range of uses including creation of standalone devices, interfacing with existing systems or experimenting with OS design and theory.

If you are interested in embedded development using the pascal language you can find more information, downloads and full source code at https://ultibo.org/

[alexfru]

Those are some big fat features. Where does the code come from? How buggy is it?

[embryo2]

Really nice set of features!

But the site is not available

[Ultibo]

Where does the code come from?

Almost all of the code is written from scratch over the past 12 months or so, the IP stack and file systems come from previous commercial projects so are heavily tested.

How buggy is it?

If I knew where the bugs were I'd fix them . Most reports so far are for missing or incomplete features rather than bugs.

[Ultibo]

But the site is not available

Site is up from here, 2 possibilities, some older versions of IE don't like it (you need to enable TLS 1.1 or 1.2). Also I've seen a couple of reports of people having trouble from ISPs in Europe (a routing issue maybe), perhaps try an anonymous proxy instead.

EDIT: The code and downloads are hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/ultibohub

[embryo2]

But the site is not available

Site is up from here, 2 possibilities, some older versions of IE don't like it (you need to enable TLS 1.1 or 1.2). Also I've seen a couple of reports of people having trouble from ISPs in Europe (a routing issue maybe), perhaps try an anonymous proxy instead.

EDIT: The code and downloads are hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/ultibohub

The GitHub is working. But the ultibo.org is still missing on the DNS servers I use.

However, the git gives an impression of the work. Haven't tried it but files like bootpcx86.pas have //To Do instead of a code, so it seems x86 support is missing. Also many other files are empty with the same //To Do marks. On the other side the filesystem.pas is 1.3 Mb large chunk of text, is it manageable? But may be it's about the way the Delphi IDE provides (I know little about it).

The RPi target is really interesting. But Pascal is a niche language for OSDeving and some time required to attract users and even more time is required to get some developers be involved. But declared feature set can help you.

[mikegonta]

How buggy is it?

If I knew where the bugs were I'd fix them ....

If it's not broken don't bug it.

[Ultibo]

But the ultibo.org is still missing on the DNS servers I use

Hi embryo2,

We found out that the hosting company was blocking a list of countries on the basis of security, they say that the blocks have now been removed.

If possible would you be able to check your access to ultibo.org now and see if it is working?

Thanks.

[embryo2]

If possible would you be able to check your access to ultibo.org now and see if it is working?

It works now. But may be a bit slow. And my personal opinion it's too showy with the moving images distracting from peaceful reading. However, many contemporary sites employ such ugly technic and somebody even can expect those jerking effects to be present. May be it's OK for teenagers.

[Ultibo]

It works now.

Thank you, much appreciated.

[Muazzam]

It's great to see a Raspberry Pi OS!

I've two questions: are you a team and how many programmers worked on the project? Is it a hobby OS or do you have some commercial or other professional goals?

I've a few suggestions:

• Stop using buzzwords.
• I think you've made your website using a website creating tool--and not using HTML. You should change it for a simpler and cleaner design. Your website can be modern but simple. (https://ghostkernel.org/about is an example.)
• Remove unnecessary images (other than screen shots, logos, etc.) on your website.

[Ultibo]

Hi Muazzam,

are you a team and how many programmers worked on the project?

A team of two, one coding and one doing everything else.

Is it a hobby OS or do you have some commercial or other professional goals?

The goal is to create a professional quality free and open source environment (OS) for Raspberry Pi and others using the pascal language, not just for those interested in OS development but for anyone interested in creating embedded devices. Being open source people may choose to use it for hobby, educational or even commercial purposes, it's up to them.

[Ultibo]

To offer more options for those wanting to use Linux as a development platform we now have instructions available for building the source on both Debian and Raspbian.

Building on Debian (https://ultibo.org/wiki/Building_for_Debian)
Building on Raspbian (https://ultibo.org/wiki/Building_for_Raspbian)

This doesn't include building the Lazarus IDE yet but if you are a keen Linux user you probably already have a favorite editor anyway.