Pexio / News: Recent posts

Yes, it's taking a while. This is for two reasons.

1.) I accidentally wrote the entire codebase to a non existent floppy disk, and carefully unmounted said non existent floppy disk - meaning I lost everything because I didn't have anything like a recent backup (old v0.1 code doesn't count since the two aren't even remotely the same codebase - entirely restructured so it's sane).

2.) v0.2 is far ahead of v0.1. v0.2 will be released when I've added the following to what I've got: physical and virtual memory managers, module manager. I will then release v0.2a and follow that as quickly as possible with v0.2b which will include at least a floppy driver and ext2fs driver. v0.2 itself will finally be released when I write a basic console for it, to be loaded off disk (at the current moment in time, debugging messages are sent to bochs debug ports - with the occasional screen message if debugging on real hardware).

Coming along nicely.

v0.2 of Pexio will be a complete rewrite so that the code is more organised and flexible.

I've now got a tasksheet of things to do before v0.2.0 is released. Should be fairly interesting, code-wise. Major things in v0.2.0 should be memory management, multitasking, a loader for PIC and ELF as modules, a console as such a module, and the ability to switch back and forth from real mode.

Also, I'll start rationalising this documentation. I'll sort the commenting in the code, and make it easier to read, get some separate documentation (RTF or TXT format TBH) up, run up some UML diagrams, get a project roadmap sorted, and get the site up.... read more

I've uploaded the v0.1.1 Full and Binary (floppy image) packages, and hidden the v0.1.0 package. This is because v0.1.1 has only had the code refactored, and includes a script and instructions to setup the environment correctly. This is the first 'proper' release.

Just took an extra couple days to run through the code and check it a little closer. I'll upload documentation when I get there, but for the moment the code's reasonably well documented with comments.

To use this source, you will require GRUB (at this stage, I'm not relying on being booted from anything in particular, so you should theoretically be able to boot this from a normal GRUB HDD install).... read more

Well, that's the first version I'll upload to here completed. Now I just need to prepare the source and binary packages (upload them), write up some documentation (upload that), and then I can march onward.

The version numbers aren't necessarily very obvious, obviously... Last number is a build number - number of times I've run 'make all' since the time I decided that it was vX.N.0. This probably covers bugfixes OR code that's working towards the next revision (the second number) number (but isn't complete yet, nor even safe - therefore is to be considered HIGHLY, HIGHLY unstable). The revision number covers every time I do something only slightly more major than a build (like v0.1.0 will be GDT, IDT, PICs remapped and some basic interrupt stuff). The version number will be updated for each collection of these revisions that I deem suitable for a version increase (so v1.0.0 might be the first version that would reasonably be deemed an operating system - rather than just code that happens to function as part of an OS).... read more

Well, having got it straight in my head what is going to be in the first release (tight on time just now, I'll post later), I've started coding. Nothing much just now, just the basic framework for the kernel, a few ASM routines, makefile, etc. Shouldn't take too long to get this bit up and running when I get a chance to code it (probably this weekend).

I'm still advancing with the planning of Pexio. I think I've just about got it clear enough in my head, and noted down sufficiently, that I should be able to start churning out the first bits of code and documentation fairly soon.