Prerequisites

If you're on Ubuntu or any Ubuntu based distro, such as Linux Mint type this

sudo apt install build-essential nasm gcc g++ bison flex xorriso qemu-system-x86 libgmp3-dev libmpc-dev libmpfr-dev texinfo libisl-dev

Or if you are using Arch Linux:

sudo pacman --needed -S nasm gcc bison flex xorriso mtools qemu-system-x86 qemu-ui-gtk make gmp libmpc libisl mpfr

Fetch the submodules

This step is IMPORTANT

Make sure to clone with --recursive to fetch all the submodules. Like this:

git clone https://github.com/ackOS-project/ackOS.git --recursive

Building the toolchain

Simply run this in the root of ackOS

$ ./toolchain/build.sh

This will take a while so be patient.

Build ackOS

IMPORTANT: The cross compiler toolchain must be built first before continuing with the build instructions.

To build ackOS run

$ make all

Running in QEMU

QEMU is prefered way of testing ackOS

$ make qemu

Running in Bochs

Bochs is recommended if you need extra debugging information

$ make bochs

If you don't already have Bochs installed you can install it (on Ubuntu) with

$ sudo apt install bochs bochs-x bochsbios vgabios

Notes on Debugging

There are several ways you can debug ackOS.

You can start a debugging instance of qemu with:

make qemu-debug

and start gdb with

make gdb DEBUG_BREAKPOINT=kmain

or you could select the 'Attach to QEMU with GDB' option from the VSCode debug sidebar.

ackOS also creates an log file called 'ackos.log' located in the root directory, which may contain some useful debugging information.

Have fun :)