Nightingale

About

Nightingale is an operating system for x86_64 that I have been developing for 7 years to learn about low-level programming and operating system design.

Nightingale implements a mostly POSIX-like userland, though compliance is not a goal. I see POSIX as useful as a well-understood and documented interface, and one that permits compatability with large amounts of existing software.

For more specific feature and capability information, see ABOUT.md.

Building nightingale

Nightingale uses the CMake build system, and you can find package requirements in the GitHub Actions workflow files.

• To build, execute make in the root of the project.
• To run, use ./run.rb - its help text will show the available options

Project map

Directories

• doc: Documentation
• include: Header files for the whole system
• interface: Interface definitions for syscalls and errno values
• kernel: The core of the operating system
• libc: Common userland routines, including things like printf
• linker: Kernel module loader, userland dynamic linker, and libelf
• script: Utility scripts for building and developing nightingale
• toolchain: CMake toolchain files
• user: In-tree usermode programs distributed with the system

Scripts

• bt.bash: convenience wrapper around addr2line for backtracing
• dump.bash: convenience wrapper around objdump
• format.bash: convenience wrapper around clang-format
• make.bash: core build engine for the project
• run.rb: convenience wrapper around qemu-system-x86_64

Interface Manifests

These manifest files define the public syscall interface of the nightingale kernel, they are rendered into C enums and metadata that is used by both the kernel and the C library.

• ERRNOS: defines the values of errno, their names, and their perror strings
• SYSCALLS: defines syscall numbers, types, and arguments