The vkernel toolchain

If you are interested in contributing or even just taking a look at vkernel then you will need to know how to build it. This document will assume that you have a working version of gcc or clang on your machine. If you do not then please make sure you have that first.

What is the toolchain?

The toolchain is a set of tools including, but not limited to, the compiler, linker, assembler and debugger. These are all used to build software. In the case of vkernel, they are used to build the kernel, by converting all of the source code files into a single ELF binary.

The following tools are used:

• i686-elf-gcc (A host independant version of gcc, aka a cross-compiler)
• i686-elf-ld (A host independant version of ld, a linker)
• nasm (An assembler)
• qemu-system-x86_64 (An x86_64 emulator, for testing)

The toolchain for vkernel itself is quite light, though this is likely to change in the future as more gets added.

The Target Triplet

The target triplet is used to describe the platform that something is going to run on. Below are a few examples:

• x86_64-freebsd
• x86_64-linux-gnu
• i486-unknown-elf
• i686-elf

The triplet is used to describe the following aspects of the targets host; machine, vendor and operating system. As a triplet it would look like machine-vendor-operatingsystem. The vendor is commonly dropped however.

So if we take a look at x86_64-linux-gnu we can tell that the machine is x86_64, there is no vendor and the operating system is linux-gnu.

Currently vkernel does not have an OS Specific Toolchain and is using a generic triplet: i686-elf. This simply states that the target machine type is i686, no vendor and an ELF compatible environment. You can change the triplet inside the Makefile, though I do not recommend doing this unless you have particular need to do so.

Installing the required toolchain

This section of the guide has been written with macOS in mind.

GNU Binutils

...