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toaruos/README.md
K. Lange 5408b34ccf update readme
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ToaruOS-NIH

screenshot

This is an experimental spin-off / distribution of ToaruOS which includes no third-party components.

The bootloader is a simple El Torito "no-emulation" CD bootloader. It is not guaranteed to work on real hardware, but has been tested in QEMU, Bochs, and VirtualBox.

The userspace includes a work-in-progress C standard library, the ToaruOS native libraries, the compositor (using only in-house graphics routines), and various other first-party utilities and applications.

Building

You'll need a working compiler to build the gcc cross-compiler targeting i686-pc-toaru. You will also need yasm for some assorted assembly files I was too lazy to translate to gas. xorriso is needed to build the final CD, genext2fs (with Debian patches) is needed for the ramdisk. Python is needed for some parts of the build as well.

Run make and you will be prompted to build a toolchain. Reply y and allow the toolchain to build.

Rationale

ToaruOS's kernel is entirely in-house. Its userspace, however, is built on several third-party libraries and tools, such as the Newlib C library, Freetype, Cairo, libpng, and most notably Python. While the decision to build ToaruOS on these technologies is not at all considered a mistake, the possibility remains to build a userspace entirely from scratch.

Goals

  • Write a basic C library.

    To support building the native ToaruOS libraries and port some basic software, a rudimentary C library is required.

  • Remove Cairo as a dependency for the compositor.

    Cairo is a major component of the modern ToaruOS compositor, but is the only significant third-party dependency. This makes the compositor, which is a key part of what makes ToaruOS "ToaruOS", an important inclusion in this project. Very basic work has been done to allow the compositor to build and run without Cairo, but it is a naïve approach and remains very slow. Implementing Cairo's clipping and SSE-accelerated blitting operations is a must.

  • Write a vector font library.

    Support for TrueType/OpenType TBD, but vector fonts are critical to the visual presentation of ToaruOS.

  • Support a compressed image format.

    ToaruOS used a lot of PNGs, but maybe writing our own format would be fun.

Roadmap

  1. Enough C to port the dynamic loader. (Done)

  2. Get the VGA terminal building. (Done)

  3. Get the shell running. (Done)

  4. De-Cairo-tize the compositor. (Done, but more work planned)

  5. Enough C to port Python. (In progress)

  6. Enough C to port GCC. (In progress)

Project Layout

  • apps - Userspace applications, all first-party.
  • base - Ramdisk root filesystem staging directory. Includes C headers in base/usr/include, as well as graphical resources for the compositor and window decorator.
  • boot - Bootloader.
  • decors - Decoration themes.
  • kernel - The ToaruOS kernel.
  • lib - Userspace libraries.
  • libc - C standard library implementation.
  • linker - Userspace dynamic linker/loader, implements shared library support.
  • modules - Kernel modules/drivers.
  • util - Utility scripts, staging directory for the toolchain (binutils/gcc).