CaCOS

coherent and cohesive operating system

CaCOS is a hobby OS, currently in rewrite. It's goal is to be functional, as well as written in elegant zig code, as much as possible. In the current rewrite there is text display, a basic file system, and userland applications as well as libraries to support them.

The Plan

STAGE 0: boot-loader ✔️

• implement the bootboot boot protocol and launch a dummy kernel ✔️

STAGE 1: core-functionality

• frame-buffer ✔️

  • basic functions (put_pixel, square, ...) -> core/display ✔️
  • display font -> core/font ✔️

• memory

  • page allocation -> core/alloc ✔️
  • page protection ->core/alloc

• interrupts ✔️

  • IDT -> cpu/idt ✔️
  • GDT -> cpu/gdt ✔️

• error handling ✔️

• Process management

• Filesystem

  • rootfs ->core/fs
    • leverage structures for nodes ✔️
    • create file✔️
    • delete file
    • set data✔️
    • append data✔️
    • change file attributes

• Syscalls ✔️

• Load binaries and execute them ✔️

STAGE 2: drivers and processes ✔️

• Keyboard ✔️
• Console ✔️

STAGE 3: apps

• Filesystem utils (cd mv rm touch cat pwd ls)
• Base commands (echo uname ps...)
• ...

STAGE 4: Beyond

• threads and multitasking
• GUI
• GPU support
• mouse support

Running the OS

NOTE: the OS is currently in heavy development and the process to run the OS is not streamlined yet

NOTE: running on macos or windows has never been tested, though it should work fine

To run the os you have to clone the git project or download the project archive via github. you can then run the following the command if you are on linux (or mac?)
qemu-system-x86_64 -drive format=raw,file=kernel/img/cacos.img

Building the OS

NOTE: the build process is very unlikely to run on non-unix system, it may work on mac with some tweaking

you will need the following dependencies:

• zig 14
• qemu-system-x86_6
• git
• zip (for building bootboot)

running the following the following command will download and compile dependencies, compile the OS code for you and run it:
zig build run

you can customize the build process by running specific steps:

• zig build compile generate an elf executable of the kernel
• zig build compile-apps creates executables for the kernel apps
• zig build setup dowloads and build mkbootimg, bootboots utility program to generate bootable images
• zig build gen create a bootable image using mkbootimg
• zig build run run the previous steps and run the image in qemu