Getting started with OS development on Windows

You will need

• MinGW
  • Download and install http://www.mingw.org/download/installer
  • Usually installs in C:\MinGW\
  • You will need to link the C:\MinGW\bin directory
• i686-elf targeting GCC
  • Download and extract https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B85K_c7mx3QjUnZuaFRPWlBIcXM/edit?usp=sharing
  • If this link goes dead, try finding another at http://wiki.osdev.org/GCC_Cross-Compiler#Prebuilt_Toolchains
  • If there's none to be found, you will need to build your own GCC cross-compiler
  • In this example, I've extracted it to C:\software\ghost-i686-elf-tools
  • You will need to link the C:\software\ghost-i686-elf-tools\bin directory
• QEMU
  • Download and install the latest exe at http://qemu.weilnetz.de/w64/
  • Usually installs in C:\Program Files\qemu

The OS code itself

The code is copied verbatim from the OSdev.org Bare bones tutorial

Building and running the OS

1. Make sure you've installed MinGW, QEMU, and have a i686-elf targeting GCC
2. Edit vars.cmd to match where you've installed or extracted dependencies.
   • set the minGW variable to the MinGW bin directory: SET "minGW=C:\MinGW\bin"
   • set the gcc variable to the GCC bin directory: SET "gcc=C:\software\ghost-i686-elf-tools\bin"
   • set the qemu variable to the MinGW bin directory: SET "qemu=C:\Program Files\qemu"
3. Run build.bat to build the OS and run it in QEMU
   • Run run.bat to just run the compiled code in QEMU