Daniel Samson
d5d15cefcb
Two related changes to make device identities legible in the boot log and in
the code that matches on them.
Logging: the pci-bus driver decodes each function's class/subclass/prog-IF
triple to human names (via the existing pci-class module), and the acpi
service appends each _HID's human name (via acpi-ids) to its report line. So
"class 0x01 (Mass Storage Controller) subclass 0x06 (Serial ATA Controller)
progif 0x01 (AHCI 1.0)" reads straight off the log when writing a driver.
Naming: a new coding standard ("Named values, not magic numbers") says a value
with meaning gets a name, prefer an enum for value sets. Applied:
- pci-class is refactored from u8-switch tables into a BaseClass enum plus
per-class SubClass/ProgIf enums with name() methods (the usb-ids shape). The
public className/subclassName/progIfName(u8...) API is unchanged, so the
hardware-byte decoders (pci-bus, the kernel dump) are untouched; output is
byte-identical.
- the device-manager builds the xHCI class triple from named parts instead of
a bare 0x0C0330.
- the acpi service's _CRS walk names its resource-descriptor tags as
SmallResourceType/LargeResourceType enums, and the _HID integer decode uses
the AML module's existing *_opcode constants (now re-exported from aml.zig)
rather than bare 0x0A/0xFF/... literals.
DanOS
Codename: Shodan Version: 1
A small resilient operating system, written from scratch in Zig.
Zen of DanOS:
- Resilient Micro-Kernel Architecture.
- Every process run in an isolated user space not kernel space.
- Processes cannot take down the entire OS with it when they die or is killed
- Stable public runtime library, private OS ABI.
- Keeps a stable runtime for user space processes between OS versions (great for backwards compatibility)
- Allows the underlying OS to be changed without effecting applications
- Provides a boundary to enable compatibility between OS's e.g. POSIX, MUSL etc
- Drivers are just isolated processes in user space.
- Thin binaries that can be restarted like applications.
- Useful during driver development.
- Drivers can claim MMIO / ports
- Driver resources (e.g. IRQ/Port/MMIO) claims are automatically cleaned up if the driver dies or is killed
- Drivers can also hook into the process lifecyle to clean up or reset hardware
- No legacy to deal with
- Zig code uses a clean coding style (Zen of Zig)
- Favor reading code over writing code.
- No magic numbers.
- No shortend names unless its for ABI compatibility or acronyms
- Inter-Process Communication (IPC)
- Publish and subscribe to Asynchronous Messages
- Talk to services and processes synchronously
Prerequisites
- Zig 0.16.x — the build is pinned to this line (
.zig-version); other minor versions are rejected, because Zig makes breaking changes between releases pre-1.0. A toolchain manager such as zvm orzigupwill pick up.zig-versionautomatically. - QEMU (
qemu-system-x86_64) — to run and test the kernel. On macOS,brew install qemualso bundles the OVMF firmware below. - OVMF UEFI firmware — the
edk2-ovmfpackage (Arch),ovmf(Debian/Ubuntu), oredk2-ovmf(Fedora); on macOS it ships inside the Homebrewqemuformula. Both the build and the test harness probe the known Arch/Debian/Fedora/macOS layouts and use the first that exists, so no configuration is normally needed. Override with-Dovmf-code=/-Dovmf-vars=(build) if yours lives elsewhere. - Python 3 — for the QEMU integration test harness.
Build
zig build
Produces a FHS-shaped zig-out/ that is the danos filesystem and the boot volume:
the UEFI bootloader at zig-out/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.efi, the kernel at
zig-out/system/kernel, init at zig-out/system/services/init, drivers under
zig-out/system/drivers/, and the initial-ramdisk at zig-out/boot/.
Run
Boot it in QEMU with OVMF (opens a display window):
zig build run-x86-64
# distro with OVMF elsewhere:
zig build run-x86-64 -Dovmf-code=/path/OVMF_CODE.fd -Dovmf-vars=/path/OVMF_VARS.fd
Test
zig build test # host unit tests (the platform-independent shared code)
python3 test/qemu_test.py # QEMU integration tests: boots the kernel and asserts
# on its serial output (see docs/testing.md)
The integration harness builds and boots the kernel once per test case, checking memory, the frame allocator, paging (incl. NX and the null guard), the heap, interrupts, and exception handling. It exits non-zero on any failure, so it drops straight into CI.
Documentation
Design notes explaining why behind the code live in
docs/ — start with docs/README.md.
Logo
San Serif Text "Dan OS" with a black karate belt around it.