This directory contains all toolchain related files. E.g. build scripts for the cross compilation toolchain and build toolchain for ports.

• Serenity Toolchain - Building the Serenity operating system
  • Cross Compile Toolchain
    • Dependencies
  • Serenity (Full build)
  • Running SerenityOS in an emulator
    • QEMU installation / compilation
    • Passing custom arguments to QEMU

The cross compile toolchain contains

• binutils 2.32

• GCC 8.3.0

These are built from source with some patches applied.

• Build Essentials

  sudo apt install build-essential curl libmpfr-dev libmpc-dev libgmp-dev

• GCC 8

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
  sudo apt-get install gcc-8 g++-8
  sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-8 800 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-8

• e2fsprogs

  sudo apt install e2fsprogs

If everything worked out, you now have the i686-pc-serenity toolchain ready and we can build Serenity.

Go into Kernel/ folder and build it:

./makeall.sh

Then take it for a spin:

./run

See next chapter for more options on running SerenityOS in an emulator.

To run SerenityOS in a specific emulator, call the ./run command in the Kernel/ folder:

./run

There are several emulators supported to run SerenityOS in:

• Bochs

  sudo apt install bochs

  Add the b argument to the run script, to use bochs emulator:

  ./run b

• QEMU QEMU with networking enabled is used by default, when no extra argument is passed to the run script. There are some extra arguments to run QEMU emulator with specific settings:

  Add the qn argument to the run script to use QEMU without networking:

  ./run qn

  Add the qgrub argument to the run script to use QEMU with grub bootloader:

  ./run qgrub

  Add the qtext argument to the run script to use QEMU with textmode:

  ./run qtext

  Note: there is a problem with the PS/2 keyboard/mouse emulation in QEMU 2.11.1 as packaged in Ubuntu's LTS releases. If you have any strange behaviour with missing keyboard inputs or jittery mouse movement, try building QEMU from source as described in QEMU. 2.12.1, 3.0.1, 3.1.0, and 4.0.0 are all confirmed as working when built from source.

If your distribution contains a QEMU version > 2.11.1, then you can just install it via

sudo apt install qemu-system-i386 qemu-utils

If that is not the case, you can build QEMU from sources with the provided script BuildQemu.sh. To do so, some build dependencies have to be installed first:

sudo apt-get build-dep qemu
sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev

The source-repositories of your distribution have to be enabled to install the build-dep's.

BuildQemu.sh has been tested with QEMU 3.0.0 and 4.1.0 (which is default). If you want to build QEMU 3.0.0, change the variable QEMU_VERSION and QEMU_MD5SUM accordingly:

QEMU_VERSION="qemu-3.0.0"
QEMU_MD5SUM="${QEMU300_MD5SUM}"

You can modify the environment variable SERENITY_EXTRA_QEMU_ARGS to your needs or hand it over directly before the run command:

SERENITY_EXTRA_QEMU_ARGS="-nographic" ./run qtext