mirror of
https://github.com/danbulant/Cosmos
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158 lines
7.9 KiB
HTML
158 lines
7.9 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
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<head>
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<title>Untitled Page</title>
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<style type="text/css">
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.style1
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{
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color: #33CC33;
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font-weight: bold;
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}
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</style>
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</head>
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<body>
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<h3>
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Introducing Cosmos</h3>
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<p>
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Cosmos (<span class="style1">C#</span> <span class="style1">O</span>pen
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<span class="style1">S</span>ource <span class="style1">M</span>anaged
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<span class="style1">O</span>perating <span class="style1">S</span>ystem)
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is an operating system development kit which uses Visual Studio as its
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development environment. Despite C# in
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the name any .NET based language can be used including VB.NET, Fortran, Delphi
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Prism, IronPython, F# and more. Cosmos itself and the kernel routines are
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primarily written in C#, and thus the Cosmos name. Besides that, NOSMOS (.NET
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Open Source Managed Operating System) sounds stupid.</p>
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<p>
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Cosmos is not an operating system in the traditional sense, but instead it is
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an "Operating System Kit", or as I like to say "Operating System Legos".
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Cosmos lets you create operating systems just as Visual Studio and C# normally
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let you create applications. Most users can write and
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boot their own operating system in just a few minutes, all using Visual Studio.
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Milestone 5 includes new features such as an integrated project type in Visual
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Studio, and an integrated debugger. You can debug your operating system directly
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from Visual Studio using breakpoints.</p>
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<p>
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Cosmos is available in two distributions, the developer kit (dev kit), and the
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user kit. The dev kit is designed for users who want to work on Cosmos itself.
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The user kit is designed for those who are interested in building their own
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operating system and doing some Cosmos work. The dev kit might be thought of as
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the Cosmos SDK. Most users should start off with the user kit as it is not so
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overwhelming like the dev kit. This article focuses on the user kit.</p>
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<h3>
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Writing your first Operating System</h3>
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<p>
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Create a new project as you would any C# project, but select Cosmos as the project
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type.</p>
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<p>
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<img alt="" src="CosmosMS5/SNAG-0000.png" style="width: 630px; height: 516px" /></p>
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<p>
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A starter project will be created. It looks very much like a standard C# console
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application.</p>
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<p>
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<img src="CosmosMS5/SNAG-0001.png" style="width: 232px; height: 143px" /></p>
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<p>
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Program.cs contains the boot and execution code. Instead of seeing a Windows
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console window, you will see the following:</p>
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<p>
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<img src="CosmosMS5/SNAG-0003.png" style="width: 738px; height: 464px" /></p>
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<p>
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This is your operating system running in VMWare Player! Cosmos can of course
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also be booted in VMWare Workstation, Hyper-V, Virtual PC, or on real hardware.
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But by default Cosmos uses VMWare Player because it is both free, and reliable.
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Cosmos can even debug in Visual Studio, even when running on another machine.</p>
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<h3>
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Integrated
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Debugging</h3>
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<p>
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Debugging is a major issue with operating system development. The Cosmos team
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was not content enough to simply conquer building and deployment, we want to
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make developing operating system as easy as developing Windows applications.
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Debugging a Cosmos based operating system should feel very familiar to you. Lets
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modify our project a little bit to show the effect, and set a breakpoint.</p>
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<p>
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<img src="CosmosMS5/SNAG-0005.png" style="width: 870px; height: 493px" /></p>
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<p>
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Now run the project again.</p>
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<p>
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<img src="CosmosMS5/SNAG-0007.png" style="width: 1177px; height: 513px" /></p>
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<p>
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Note that the execution stopped at "One"? That is becuase in Visual Studio our
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project has stopped on a breakpoint. Simply press F5 to continue just as you
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would in a normal application!</p>
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<p>
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In addition to breakpoints Cosmos also supports step into (F11) as well. Trace
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over (F10) is not supported yet.</p>
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<h3>
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Debugger Communication</h3>
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<p>
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The debugger uses the serial port to communicate. Because of this, debugging
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only works wtih virtualization environments that support serial ports such as
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VMWare. QEMU supports serial ports as well, but its serial port implementation
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is seriously broken on Windows and makes debugging impossible using QEMU. To debug on real hardware, you must use a
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physical serial cable. In the future Cosmos will also support debugging over
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Ethernet.</p>
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<h3>
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Extra Debugging</h3>
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<p>
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Cosmos supports some explicit methods that can be used to communicate with the
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debugger and use additional functionality. It is accessed using the Debugger
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class in the Cosmos.Debug namespace in the Cosmos.Kernel assembly. This assembly
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is used by all Cosmos projects.</p>
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<h3>
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Code Based Breakpoints</h3>
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<pre>Debugger.Break();</pre>
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<p>
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Break can be used to issue a code based break. Visual Studio will break on the
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line after this statement. </p>
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<p>
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<img src="CosmosMS5/SNAG-0006.png" style="width: 509px; height: 174px" /></p>
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<p>
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Since Cosmos does not support conditional breakpoints in the IDE yet, code base
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breaks are very useful for implementing such. For example:</p>
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<pre>if (x == 5) {
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Debugger.Break();
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}</pre>
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<p>
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Alternatively you can call the .NET class libary break:</p>
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<pre>System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();</pre>
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<p>
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Both functions will produce the same result.</p>
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<h3>
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Debug Output</h3>
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<p>
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Debug strings can be output to the debug window of the host. Because Cosmos does
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not support watches yet, this functionality can be very useful for watching
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variable values and for performing tracing without breakpoints.</p>
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<pre>Debugger.Send("Hello from Cosmos!");</pre>
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<p>
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When this line is executed, it will send a message over the debugging channel
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and it will appear in the Visual Studio output window.</p>
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<p>
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<img alt="" src="CosmosMS5/SNAG-0008.png" style="width: 454px; height: 118px" /></p>
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<h3>
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What's the catch?</h3>
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<p>
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There really is no catch. Everything I've shown here is functioning as seen.
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No mockups were used. However we still have a lot of work to go. Items of interest that
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are on our current task list include interfaces (necessary for foreach), file
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systems (partial support exists), threads, networking, and graphics. We have
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prototypes and experimentation for each, but none have been rolled into the
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mainline Cosmos development as of yet.</p>
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<h3>
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What was that Syslinux thing I saw on boot?</h3>
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<p>
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Cosmos does not run on Linux. A boot loader called Syslinux is used to boot
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Cosmos. After booting, Syslinux is not used. Syslinux is a bootloader and is not
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a Linux distro.</p>
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<h3>
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Obtaining Cosmos</h3>
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<ul>
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<li>Cosmos Website - <a href="http://www.GoCosmos.org">http://www.GoCosmos.org</a></li>
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<li>Source Code - Both dev kit and user kit - <a href="http://Cosmos.CodePlex.com">
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http://Cosmos.CodePlex.com</a></li>
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</ul>
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</body>
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</html>
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