x86 bare metal Rust thing
I'm following the intermezzOS book to get a feel about how Rust can be used for x86 kernel development. I'm particularly interested in studying the tooling involved as I heard that developers make use of Makefiles and external assembly files to build their kernels, and I feel that neither (Makefiles or external assembly files) should be necessary if one uses Cargo to build the kernel (but I might be wrong).
I have another goal: I'd love the replace rustc dependence on an external linker (usually gcc)
with a lld that's embedded in rustc itself. The x86 kernel dev space is an excellent testing
ground for this as its "executables" (the kernels) are free of C dependencies (libraries, startup
objects, etc.). Check the lld branch for more details.
I've just finished Chapter 3, and my "kernel" prints "Hello, world!" to the screen and does nothing more 🎉. Some relevant differences between my build process and intermezzOS':
# Build the kernel
$ xargo build --target x86_64
- No external assembly files. The multiboot header (
multiboot_header.asm) has been fully implemented in the linker script. Andboot.asmhas been implemented as Rust code (src/main.rs). - There's only a single line of assembly:
asm!("hlt"), which can't be emitted using pure Rust code (AFAIK). coreis not explicitly build. Xargo takes care of compiling it without user intervention.
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